


Rouge

by LullabyKnell



Series: Back From The Dead, Red? [1]
Category: One Piece
Genre: Female Characters, Female Friendship, Female-Centric, Fix-It, Gen, Gen Work, Gen or Pre-Slash, Mother-Son Relationship, Not Really Character Death, Slow Build, Temporary Character Death, Time Skips, Universe Alteration
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-06
Updated: 2017-07-11
Packaged: 2018-04-30 05:55:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 75,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5152787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LullabyKnell/pseuds/LullabyKnell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Portgas D. Rouge stole from a god to save her son's life. After she died, she made a dangerous bet with the angry god for the chance to come back. Against all odds, she won. The only issue is that she comes back ten years later, because gods can't lose with grace for some reason, and she has absolutely no idea what Garp did with her kid.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Borrowed Time

**Author's Note:**

> I've been wanting to write something in the One Piece universe for awhile and Ace is one of my favorite characters, and I've been wanting to do something with Rouge because she's the only female character with the D. initial and surely she has to be amazing, so... this.  
> I've got a few ideas for original characters and things that I want to change, but otherwise this is pretty open in what could happen. All of the characters listed will be included eventually. The update schedule is also kind of... uncertain at this point in time, but I am going to try.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Portgas D. Rouge gives up her son and her life, but she doesn't give up on getting them back.

 

It was humbling, to say the least, to watch Rouge fade like this.

The D.'s were a strong, hardy, and stubborn bunch, as Garp could and would easily attest to. Why, he himself was a prime example of the proud Will of D. and its carriers! Living proof of how D.'s were lively! D.'s were vibrant! D.'s were, above all else, willful!

Portgas D. Rouge was... _had_ been... no exception.

Now, she just looked tired in a way that sleep couldn't fix, weak and vulnerable in a way that might bring tears to Garp's eyes and Garp to his knees if he thought about it too long. Because here was a brilliant and powerful woman, who, two years ago, might have met and matched his fists with a laugh, and now her thinned arms looked like they might snap in a gentle breeze. She couldn't even manage to turn her head to watch the midwife work at the moment.

The last year had evidently taken a heavy toll on Rouge, delving into a world of sacrifice and physical strength that had been left a mystery to Garp. She'd been fading for months apparently, laughing away any concerns as she became a skeletal shade of her former self. When he'd asked, Rouge had only shrugged and called the inexplicable leeching of her strength and health an 'inevitability of time', talking dreamily about her beautiful baby as her skin became sallow, her face became gaunt, and her belly swelled unnaturally against her dying frame. Any attempt to keep her healthy, though help seemed to have been rarely offered and even more rarely accepted, had only seemed to make things worse.

And all this while she ran from village to village, island to island, and sea to sea from the Marines. Her confident swagger had become a hard-won wobble, and her strong lead had sometimes become merely a half-step away from getting caught, but she'd escaped in the end. From the Marines, at least.

Garp had only found her because of his promise to Roger, and been stunned to meet Portgas D. Rouge and find that Roger's secret lover had an alter-ego that Garp had chased across the Grand Line multiple times. He'd seen for himself the alliance and friendship between the Pirate King and the World's Greatest Thief, even wondered if there was anything more to it, but... he would never have expected the latter to actually have been a woman the entire time.

Watching this now, it was like the first time he had buried an officer under his command or like the first time he'd held his son, or... or even... like watching Roger's execution all over again, anew. Just as significant though much more quiet – another point that would decide how the world turned. Garp was humbled to watch this woman fade away for good.

Garp carefully slid his arm around her, ignoring the sweat and blood, and lifted her into a supported half-sitting position. It was easy, as his strength had not waned at all. In fact, it almost seemed as though his large hands had gotten bigger, easily enough to snap Rouge clean in two.

She shivered against him, skin already cooling to the touch, and he tried not to let his mind turn to platforms and crowds and a smiling man in manacles.

These were not the ends he'd expected his foes would have.

The midwife, Troise Rhysa, an old, brown-skinned crone who claimed to have been birthing babies since before Garp was born, deposited the baby on Rouge's chest, wearing the same wrinkly grin that she'd kept since Rouge had finally gone into labor two days ago. She'd announced herself too old to be 'scared of helping 'some pretty blonde twit who apparently loved the glow of pregnancy too damn much', and Garp was grateful that the cackling bat had had the compassion to scold and taunt Rouge through what were obviously the younger woman's final hours.

“You've got a healthy and strong little boy there, twit,” Rhysa congratulated, gnarled and bloody hands reaching to position Rouge's arms around her newborn baby. “Might have to do an operation to remove the lungs for the sake of the world's ears, but at least he's got all his fingers and toes.”

Rouge tried to laugh, but she'd lost the strength to do more than huff weakly hours and hours ago.

“That's... good,” she breathed, staring down adoringly at the bundle in her arms and slowly closing her trembling fingers around a tiny fist with wonder. “Hello, aren't... you beautiful? Isn't... isn't he beautiful, Garp-san?”

Objectively, no. The baby looked like a misshapen, bloody little doll with squished limbs and squashed face, which resembled neither Rouge _nor_ Roger, and which had somehow managed to grow a sticky mess of black hair. And besides blood, the baby was also still partly covered in other fluids that Garp had not known existed until very, very recently.

But instead, Garp – who did _not_ need the old bat's threatening finger-across-the-throat gesture to know that that sort of stuff was an untactful thing to say to a dying woman – truthfully said, “Yes, he's a beautiful baby, Rouge! Well done!”

Because it was a beautiful sight to see the tiny, living result of Rouge and Roger's chaotic, complicated romance – their new dream, apparently – even if they'd both been his enemies. Here was a baby so loved and so precious to his parents that they'd defied the world to let him live and would soon both be dead for it. Looking down at this brand new person, Garp thought he could feel Roger's indomitable presence again, watching over them all, proud and joyful and laughing even in death.

“He has... his father's hair,” Rouge noticed, frowning slightly as she ran her fingers over a scrunched little nose. “I hope... he won't have his father's... face.”

Rhysa, who was busy with her clean up, looked over at Garp with a solemn and knowing expression at the unusual statement. She'd made more than a few bitter comments over the horrific recent Marine activity, something she was well in a position to have more information on than most, and there'd been a sharp look in her eyes once the old woman had gotten Rouge to admit that she'd somehow managed to hold her pregnancy for twenty months. She knew, Garp had no doubt.

“Bwahahaha! It'd be cruel to put that ugly mug on a baby!” Garp agreed jovially, making Rouge huff in laughter again but not quite managing to wipe the concerned frown from her face.

Children often looked much like theirs parents, one or the other if not both, and if Rouge's son looked too much like his father... well, hiding would be incredibly difficult. There probably wasn't a person in the world who didn't have Roger's last grin burned into their memories. Rouge was right to be worried.

“If the little brat's lucky, he'll look like his vain twit of a mother,” Rhysa quipped, cackling as Rouge managed a half-hearted glare. “Oh, stop stalling, you little twit, and name the bouncy bundle of spit-up before I keel over. I'm old and Death's got his eye on me, I can't wait for you younglings to get about your business all slow-like.”

“Do the world... a favor... and keel over al... ready, then, Old Frog-san,” Rouge replied, too breathy to manage any actual bite. She immediately turned her attention back to her son as the old woman cackled some more. “Garp-san... what do you... think?”

“Garp! Garp's a good name!” he answered proudly, caught completely off-guard and completely unable to think of any other answer. He never thought she'd ask _him_ this sort of thing. “Has a nice ring to it, lots of distinction, lots of history! Could call him Junior for short! Bwahaha!”

Rouge wheezed in laughter so hard that she started coughing and Rhysa had to totter off to fetch some water. After a careful sip, Rouge slightly glazed eyes were still shining with humor and it looked like she was having trouble containing further laughter.

“Roger would... never forgive me,” Rouge wheezed, looking so tempted to actually do it for that reason alone that Garp could see the fragments of her previous self pulled together again for a moment. “But no, one Garp-san... is already too many Garp-sans... I think.”

Garp laughed, exchanging a good-humored look with Rhysa. The old woman hadn't even reacted to the name of the Pirate King and wandered off back to her cleaning with a scolding cluck at the both of them, muttering about being too old for this sort of silly nonsense.

“He said Ann... for a girl,” Rouge continued. “Roger... wanted a little pirate princess... I think. ...Would have spoiled her... absolutely rotten. Whole crew... would have.”

Garp tried to imagine the Pirate King's fearsome crew – no-mercy fighters and ruthless killers, the lot of them – cooing over a tiny toddler girl and found that it was a disturbingly easy-to-summon mental image, along with the one of them cooing over this boy right here. In another life, if the crew hadn't disbanded and been hunted, and secrecy wasn't so important here, this boy would have had no shortage of godfathers and honorary uncles.

Along with more godfathers and uncles, and probably at least a couple godmothers and honorary aunts, once Rouge's crew got involved. Garp had no idea as to the genders of Rouge's crew, but he was willing to bet that Rouge hadn't been the only one operating under a false name and gender.

But that was another world, where Rouge's crew hadn't been disbanded also and had at least been told of their captain's pregnancy. According to Rouge, she'd never told them about her baby and Roger's crew hadn't been informed either. The latter had never even learned Rouge's real identity or gender.

Well, the first mates had known everything, Rouge had admitted, something that was usually inevitable at sea. But the Dark King was currently leading the Marines away on a _not-so-_ merry chase (he got his moniker for a reason) on the other side of the world. Again according to Rouge, he thought his infamy would only be harmful to the child, which was probably true, and he was aware of Roger's final request to Garp and respected his captain's final wishes.

As for Rouge's first mate... Garp had no idea what Rouge did to make the man stay away. She'd only said that their parting hadn't been on the best of terms. Rouge's ex-first mate's protectiveness of his captain had been legendary and his recent trail of destruction suddenly made a lot more sense from the perspective of a temper-tantrum at a forceful separation. The deadly swordsman had always been prone to dramatics, after all.

Garp could well recall Sengoku's complaining at the amount of trouble and paperwork being caused by the man (possibly actually a woman? Nah, probably not), something that had in general quadrupled (at least) as a whole since the 'Great Pirate Era' had started with Roger's disastrous execution.

Even on the chopping block, Roger got them good. Dangerous to the very end, Rouge's lover had turned the world on its head with a few sentences, and Garp swore that he could hear that damn man's impossible laughter coming from beyond the grave.

“I think... something like Ann would be... good. Something short... with the same sort of... sound. What do you think of... Ace?” Rouge asked.

Garp thought about it, then tried it out. “Gol D. Ace?”

“ _Portgas_ D. Ace.”

“Ah, Portgas D. Ace,” Garp corrected himself sheepishly.

“I have a... perfectly good name,” Rouge said with an offended sniff. “And Roger isn't... here... here to argue it. And even if he was... he could shove his _gold_ where... the sun doesn't shine. I had him, I can... name him whatever I want.”

After the last two days, and the whole last two years – the last twenty or so, if he counted her impressive career in piracy – Garp wasn't going to argue with her. Not to mention that naming him Gol D. Ace after Rouge's years of running and mysteriously managing to extend her pregnancy would be pretty damn stupid. It would be so obvious that the Marines might even think it was a prank of some kind – Garp might have – though some of them didn't have any funny bone to speak of.

But... Portgas D. Ace... that had a good sound to it.

Rouge sighed. “He won't have a father... and he probably won't have a mother... either. I'm not going... to last much longer... hush, Garp-san, you know I'm right. But... he could use a... a grandfather... are you going to...? Do you...?”

For what was not the second of even tenth time in the last two days, Garp was struck speechless. He should probably just be glad that he didn't faint again (which he never actually _did;_ he only _fell asleep,_ no matter what the old bat said). This blindsided him completely, because while he respected Rouge – as an insane, dangerous, cross-dressing, pirate foe – he never thought...

Roger was one thing, but...

“Are you sure?”

Rouge looked amused. “What...? You think Revolutionary-san... is going to take time off from his cause... long enough to actually give you... a grandchild? Last I heard... sex needs to happen for conception... and he'd have to stop being mysterious... long enough to get l-”

“GAH,” Garp managed, because his son having sex was one of the last things that he ever wanted to think about. It was right up there with the time he had to give Dragon the sex talk. “STOP.”

Rouge's eyes were shining with mirth again as she trace her sleeping son's tiny limbs and tried to memorize every bit of him. “Do you think that... Revolutionary-san will just... duplicate one day...? Or maybe he'll lay an egg... like a draaaaaagon.”

“Stop, _please,_ ” Garp demanded, wondering why in the world he'd been surprised at all. Clearly, to have been in love with Gol D. Roger, Portgas D. Rouge was just as mad as he had been.

“Surrender, Garp-san...” she told him defiantly. “Be my son's... grandfather and... I'll stop.”

Garp sighed, thoroughly defeated by his cunning foe. “You don't have to resort to dirty tricks for that, Rouge! I'd be honored to take this little brat as a grandkid!” Like he could say no after both Roger and Rouge had asked it of him now.

He reached out tentatively to touch the baby with his free hand, which was big enough that Garp might be able to hold the boy in his palm. Little Ace was still a little sticky, but otherwise extremely soft to the touch. Garp could feel the boy's fluttering heartbeat through thin skin, fragile and small.

“'S'the only one... you're going to get... too... so treasure him.”

“Of course,” Garp promised her.

He didn't become a Marine to try newborn babies for the fathers' crimes, or their mothers' for that matter, and Rouge was a good woman as Roger had been a good man. Not kind... not merciful... not innocent... but... still good. Still good.

Rhysa walked back into the room, wrinkly smile ever-present. “Alright, monkey-man, pick the pretty twit up and move her to the next room. We've got to clean her up and I've got a clean bed ready so she can get some sleep next to her loudmouth brat.”

“Clean...” Rouge said mournfully as Garp obeyed the old bat, careful not to dislodge Ace from Rouge's chest as he stood. “Oh, to be clean again... I've almost forgotten what... it's like.”

Rhysa snorted. “Birth does that. This way, monkey-man.”

 

**{1}**

 

“So... King of the Pirates, eh? Sounds stupidly romantic... or romantically stupid,” Rhysa quipped, flipping her long white braid over her shoulder, manhandling and scrubbing Rouge's body with far more strength than one would expect from an old woman. “'S'like one of those trashy novels I keep finding under my granddaughter's bed.”

Rouge huffed tiredly, hating her weak limbs and that she lacked the strength to clean them herself – that she'd accepted this price didn't mean she didn't hate it. There was little point in cleaning them, really, since she wouldn't be around much longer to enjoy that, but she was grateful that Rhysa seemed to have guessed that Rouge would prefer to pass away without the mess, stink, and blood of extremely recent birth.

“'S'lot less easy... and happy... than the books make it... sound,” Rouge sighed. “Are you...?”

“Going to shout it from the rooftops? Nah. These old knees weren't made for climbing, and I got better things to do anyway. Never did care who the father was; they're not important; it's the mother and the baby that're my business. Nothing else.”

“...Thank you.”

“Hah. No, thank _you._ You've given me a way to stick it to those whitecoats after the sick nonsense they've been up to, brat,” Rhysa said, grinning wickedly. “I was surprised that the monkey-man was helping you, though. But I suppose that a decent one had to be in there somewhere.”

“Garp-san's a... good man,” Rouge replied, smiling back before looking at her baby sleeping on the bed.

And he really was. Her baby would be kept safe right under the Marines' noses and get a grandfather who'd love him no matter what life he chose, which was proven by Garp's unconditional love of his own son despite Monkey D. Dragon's... strong opinions. If Ace wanted to be a Marine, he could hardly ask for a better mentor; if Ace wanted to be a farmer, well... Garp would be _extremely_ confused but supportive (probably); and if Ace wanted to be a pirate, well... her baby better be able to run _really_ fast, but Garp would never stop loving him.

Roger had known it too. Clever, frustrating man.

At the moment, Garp had left to give her some privacy, which was gallant of him although there wasn't exactly anything that he hadn't seen at this point. He'd said something about returning to his ship to make a call, probably talking the ear off some poor Marine and lying by omission about Rouge and Ace. He'd be back sooner than later, so Rouge decided that she had better confess a few things before he returned.

“Can you... keep another secret?”

“I know and have kept more secrets than you know anything at all, you twit.”

Rouge huffed and wished she had the strength to bicker with this old frog. She couldn't manage her regular quips and performances right now, which was such a shame, because it would have fun.

“My pregnancy lasted... twenty months.”

Rhysa slowed her work. “Still not sure how you managed that, brat; it's not something willpower should be able to stop. Things don't work that way. And it's 'specially strange since your baby is only on the bigger side for a regular newborn in size. Like he stopped growing. It doesn't add up.”

“Did... some borrowing... from a god.”

Rhysa stopped entirely for a moment, then carefully continued scrubbing. “Borrowing?”

“Well... didn't exactly ask... permission.”

With a long and overly exaggerated sigh that Rouge felt was extremely unwarranted, Rhysa said, “Younglings these days.”

“Shut up, Old Frog-san, this is important.”

“Get on with it then.”

“My body's probably... going to fade away. The god's... a bit... pissed off. I've got some explaining to do... and they can't... cross over here so-... Now that... I've had the baby... they're not going... to wait... much longer to have a... word with me.”

Rouge waited for Rhysa to stop again, or to say something, but the old woman just continued her work in silence for a few moments. Eventually, Rhysa sighed again, less dramatically and much more tiredly.

“There's nothing about this pregnancy that could be simple with you, twit?”

“The... trashy novel romance... didn't say it enough?”

“Hah. Does the monkey-man know?”

“No.”

“Nothing about any of it?”

“No.”

“Well... thanks for leaving me to deal with him after you magically fade away into sparkly dust or whatever you're doing to do.”

“...No problem.”

Rhysa hummed, finally finished her work, and reached for a robe folded off to the side. “Anything else you want to tell me while the monkey-man's gone?” she asked as she helped Rouge into the soft and warm fabric that smelled just as fantastic as it felt.

“If it works out... I might be back.”

“Back?” Rhysa repeated skeptically, almost carrying Rouge over to the bed, which either spoke to the old woman's strength again or just how much Rouge had wasted away over the past year.

Only the beginning of the price for what she'd done.

Rouge huffed weakly, smiling at the midwife as she settled onto the soft sheets next to her baby, who snuffled in his sleep as Rhysa helped Rouge curl around him.

“I knew what... I was doing,” Rouge told the old woman. “If I... I play my cards right... I think I can... get some more out... of this game. There's a fifty-fifty... chance of it... just about. Didn't want to... tell Garp-san and get his... or... anyone else's hopes up if... it goes wrong.”

Rhysa stared for a few beats, then cackled quietly. “You're a cocky and arrogant brat. You're more skin and bones now than I am, what're you gonna do against an angry god?”

“...Win,” Rouge answered simply, staring hungrily at her son just in case she didn't.

Rhysa glanced at the baby on the bedsheets. “Well, I suppose you've got the motivation for it. What'll happen then?”

“I'll probably... appear back here.”

“So I should warn my kids and grandkids about magically-appearing blonde twits, then. Wonderful; like they didn't think I was senile enough already.”

Rouge winced. “Sorry about... the intrusion.”

“Don't be. Mothers and babies are my business and I don't do any birth half-assed, no matter the problems the mothers bring with them. You know, twit, no matter how old I get, you girls are always inventing new troubles,” Rhysa declared with a harrumph. “Just make your business fast. Too long with monkey-man and that boy is going to be wild.”

“Oh, I... hope so,” Rouge replied. “I hope... so...”

 

**{1}**

 

Garp returned just as Rhysa left Rouge's new room – just in time to see the old woman's grin leave her face and her eyes to get a sharp glint to them. She looked at him steadily, for once really looking her age, and Garp's heart seized for a moment in his chest as he thought that he hadn't hurried through his check-in quite fast enough.

“She's still here,” Rhysa assured him plainly. “But she doesn't have much time left. Say your goodbyes while you can, monkey-man, along with anything else you gotta say.”

Then the old midwife tottered down the hall, shoulders weary, towards where some of her family were taking tea in the kitchen. One of her grandchildren, a preteen girl with a long braid, peered curiously down the hall at him before a woman that was most likely her mother pulled her away and murmured that they needed to leave Granny's clients alone to rest.

Garp took a deep breath and entered the dimly lit room, where Rouge was curled around her baby in a wide bed. It would have been such a perfect image if Rouge's limbs weren't so thin and her face wasn't so gaunt; her eyes opened only barely as she watched him close the door and cross the room towards her. He sat down on the chair by the bed and took the hand that wasn't brushing gently through Ace's hair.

It was like ice.

Garp took another breath, much more watery than the first, and did as Rhysa had suggested. He said his last goodbyes, ones that he'd never gotten to say to a foe before, and told Rouge what a phenomenal woman and person that she'd been. Piracy of course excluded because he _was_ a marine. But even then, Rouge had been a fearsome foe and an admirable hellion of the high seas.

Rouge replied much less than before, like it was difficult to get the words out, and her answers became quieter and quieter until they were entirely soundless. When she couldn't speak anymore, Garp ignored the tears on his face and kept talking about almost anything that he could think of, just to see her keep that tired smile and that glimmer of true humor in her eyes.

For Roger, if not for her.

He talked about the 'Great Pirate Era' that Roger had started and all of the trouble that it was causing for the Marines. He talked about the continuous rise of the Whitebeard Armada and the repeated failures to catch the Dark King, some of them so spectacular that Sengoku had once actually dropped his face into his paperwork and stayed there for a full half-hour. He talked about the upcoming rookies and the more experienced youngsters starting their own crews, like that damn Redhair brat, and all the ways that the Will of D. lived on, stronger than ever and beyond hope of ever dying in this new, glowing age rising from the bones of their golden founders.

After an hour, Rouge's eyes closed and never re-opened. After another hour, she was dead.

Garp, who thought that he really should have been used to death by now but was glad that he wasn't, rubbed away his tears with his sleeve, took little Ace out of his mother's arms, and left the room to go tell Rhysa that Rouge was gone and ask what the hell he was going to do with a newborn baby _and_ an active commission. He still didn't know what kind of a father he'd been and wasn't sure what kind of grandfather he'd make.

He left Portgas D. Rouge where she was, peaceful and cold on the bed, still smiling even in death.

Later, when he came back for the body, she was gone.

 

 


	2. Cost of Victory

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A dead woman appears on a bed in a midwife's house. A strange woman appears on a ship in the middle of the sea. A loyal woman appears on an island in search of her captain.

 

Rina was actually used to strange women showing up out of nowhere. It was part of the package that came with being a midwife, the daughter of a well-known midwife, and the granddaughter of Troise Rhysa, who'd been birthing babies so damn long that there wasn't anyone left on all of Baterilla who hadn't had a baby birthed by her or been birthed by her. Women came to the Troise clan from all over South Blue, and sometimes even from farther.

Sometimes there were weeks where it seemed that, every time Rina turned around, there was another heavily-pregnant person, usually right in the middle of a contraction, suddenly bursting through the door and yelling for help. Those were the weeks where Rina slept with her shoes on and a hand on the second work bag that she kept next to the bed, and she sometimes was left wondering if she'd manage to birth a baby in her sleep one day.

When she bumped her bedroom door open with her hip, arms full of medical books, and found a beautiful blonde asleep on her bed, Rina didn't even startle. Her granny would kill her if she dropped family heirlooms, and Rina was sort of busy wondering if she'd passed out from exhaustion at the at the dinner table again or if one of her sex fantasies had suddenly become reality.

After a few moments of staring, Rina turned down the hall and shouted, “MOOOOOOOOM?”

“What is it, Rina?”

“Do we have a client over?”

Her mother was silent for a few moments, then appeared in the kitchen doorway. “Not that I'm aware of,” she answered, then turned back into the kitchen. “Mom, do you have a client over that your old memory forgot about?”

“I haven't forgotten a single client in all my years of work, you brat!”

With a long-suffering sigh, Rina's mother turned back to face her daughter. “We shouldn't have anyone at the moment, dear. Why?”

Rina took another glance at the beautiful – though really skinny and kind of _really_ ill-looking – woman on her bed. “Can you come check that I'm not hallucinating from lack of sleep and that there's actually a woman sleeping on my bed right now?”

“I don't want to hear about your hook-ups, young lady,” Rina's mother said scoldingly, though she did seem curious enough to come check it out. “And I'm not here to do the morning-after thing for you; I had enough of that with your brother and you're more than old enough to be getting rid of them on your own now.”

“ _Mom,_ I was with you _all_ last night. I'm pretty sure that I did not have time to find a complete stranger to bring home and sex up.”

“Oh, I don't know. When _I_ was your age-”

“ _Mom, no.”_

Rina's mother gave her daughter an unimpressed look, then leaned to take a look through Rina's doorway at the blonde woman on the bed. “Well, I'll be damned.” Then she leaned back out and shouted down the hallway, “MOM! CLIENT! Roll your wrinkly old butt down here!”

Then Rina's mother, ever the practical and practiced midwife, rolled up her sleeves and marched into the room to inspect the woman. Rina followed her mother into the room, placing the books down as a doorstop to prop the door open for her grandmother's wheelchair, and then joined her mother at the edge of the bed as her mother unashamed poked and prodded at the unconscious woman.

“Well, looks to me like this lady hasn't eaten or slept in months,” Rina's mother announced, looking thoroughly bewildered and extremely concerned. “I have no idea how she's alive right now. And I'd need a better look at her to be sure, but I think she gave birth very recently. Haven't seen a baby lying around, have you, Rina?”

“Uh... no.”

Then the familiar sound of Rina's granny's cackle came from behind them, and Rina and mother turned to watch Troise Rhysa roll herself into the room wearing her regular wicked smirk. The old woman rolled right up to the bedside at speed, making sure to smack her wheelchair into Rina and mother's ankles as she'd taken to doing lately.

“I'd almost given up on this pretty twit!” Rina's granny announced, ignoring her daughter's cursing in favor of cackling again. “She looks exactly the same as she did when she disappeared! Rina! Riika! Get your bags and a doctor! I've been waiting to finish this job for years and I'm not about to let this stubborn twit die after all this time!”

Rina and her mother looked at each other, then down at the woman between them, then back at each other. Riika shrugged, and together they took off running out of the room and down the hall. Riika snatched her own bag off a side table without looking and dove for Rina's on the couch, while Rina didn't even bother closing the front door as she ran for the village doctor, knowing that one of her family would get it.

They were used to strange women appearing out of nowhere, after all.

 

**{2}**

 

The strange woman seemed to appear out of nowhere, which immediately told Rouge that this was someone incredibly dangerous. Firstly, Rouge had never been an easy person to sneak up on and she'd been even more wary of late, almost bordering on paranoia. Secondly, there was nowhere for the strange woman to have come from but the ocean itself – Rouge's small skiff had not seen another island or vessel in days – and that didn't bode well.

As it seemed the stranger was content to just sit on the railing and stare, Rouge studied her quickly. The woman had dark and leathery skin, greenish black locks, short legs, long arms, spindly fingers, a hunched posture, and enormous eyes that looked like giant pearls. Dripping wet and dressed in a soaked cloak of weeds and shells, with a wide-smiling mouth full of pointed yellow teeth, she looked like some kind of sea troll. The strong stench of sea-brine only complimented this comparison.

The strangest thing about her, though, which really put Rouge on edge, was the way that Observation Haki seemed to flow around her, like it was unwilling to touch or was being redirected. Or maybe even like it didn't think anything was there. Rouge could not read anything of this stranger's intentions, not a single whisper of thought or emotion, and so she stayed on her toes with her two trusty daggers drawn and ready.

“Oho, calm down. I'm no' gonna hurt ya or yer babe,” the troll woman said, giving up staring to pluck at one of the barnacles growing all over her long arms. As she peeled it off and popped it into her mouth to munch on, another one grew almost instantly in its place.

Rouge was wearing a rather baggy and opaque shirt, standing in a stance that should not have immediately betrayed the bump of her midriff, and she had hardly put up signs of her condition.

“Who are you and how do you know me, Stranger-san?” Rouge demanded, feeling bare without her familiar coat or strong ship or her loyal crew, all of which she'd done away with herself and really had no right to miss.

The troll woman turned her eerie eyes back to Rouge and grinned, still chewing. “I don't wanna tell ya my name, since ya dunno me well enough fer that, but ya can call me... Cee. As fer how I know ya... oho, ain't no better thief in all tha Blues than ol' Redblack Jack, eh?”

In a fluid motion, Rouge threw one dagger at the stranger and charged with intent to carve with the second, because this Cee knew two of her most deadly secrets and Rouge's secrets had stayed secrets because dead men didn't talk. But Cee's long fingers snatched the blade out of the air with ease and her pearly eyes flashed, and it suddenly felt like the world collapsed.

Rouge's knees gave out from under her and she crumpled onto the deck, gasping for air with her arms shaking violently, feeling like the sky had fallen directly onto her back. The impossible pressure was intense enough that her vision became a swirl of black spots and she was torn between vomiting and fainting, incapable of telling the sea from the sky.

But only for a moment; then Rouge released her own will to batter back the wave of pressure, grabbing the dagger she'd let clatter to the deck and shakily pushing herself back to her feet. She'd never met a will that she could not withstand – she'd been matched, yes, but never beaten – and she wasn't about to let that change now.

Even with her crew disbanded, even with her ship gone, Rouge was still a pirate. Still a captain. She had a crew to protect, even if she was the ship and it was only a crew of one at the moment.

“Oho!” Cee declared, dropping the dagger she'd been picking her teeth with and bouncing up and down on the railing in excitement. “Ya'll do! Ya'll do!”

And the intense pressure suddenly disappeared, as easily as it had descended. The sky seemed to lift back up to where it was supposed to be, although it had never actually dropped, and Rouge watched in bewilderment as the strange troll woman with the most intense Conqueror's Haki that Rouge had ever felt performed an even stranger little jig on the ship railing.

“Oho!” Cee warbled. “Ehe! Aha! Now that's tha stuff!”

Rouge slowly reached for the spare knife she kept in her boot.

The troll woman stopped dancing and grinned savagely at Rouge. “Ya'll do, child o' D. Oho, ya'll definit'ly do! Let's do _business_.”

 

**{2}**

 

Rouge came to slowly, her mind groggily registering a white ceiling as though in the middle of a horrible hangover, complete with a dull ache in her skull. Even blinking was far more troublesome than it should have been, although the action thankfully didn't _quite_ hurt. She almost felt like she was floating and sinking in water at the same time, a distant sort of memory for her, but she couldn't think clearly enough to figure it out.

“Finally awake, eh, brat?”

With a great amount of effort and an even greater amount of pain, Rouge tilted her head to see the old woman that had birthed her baby. Troise Rhysa looked wrinklier than ever, her long braid of hair even whiter than before, and she was seated in a rickety-looking wheelchair at the side of Rouge's bed.

Rouge gave a breathless, smiling sigh at the sight of a familiar, _human_ face.

“...I... I won,” she gasped, voice hoarse and cracking, tears welling up in her eyes from sheer exhaustion and utter relief. She couldn't even move her arms, which felt like they were being held down by weights, to wipe the tears away, but she didn't care at all. “I... I... _won._ ”

“Yep, now calm down before I have to sedate you,” Rhysa ordered. “I don't know how you even managed that, since you returned in pretty much the exact same state that you were in before. You've been with us a week and only just been declared out of immediate danger. You're exhausted and dangerously underweight, so you're not getting out of that bed, got it?”

“I _won._ ”

Rhysa sighed, reaching over to the bedside table for a handkerchief and dabbing at Rouge's face with it. “At least stop the crying before you drown yourself. I know you've earned it, but you were suffering from dehydration before and we really don't need that happening again.”

Rouge nodded, or at least tried to. “It's just... I almost... I _won._ ”

“Yes, yes, you did,” Rhysa said, still mopping up the streams that Rouge, for the life of her, couldn't stop. Snot was coming out of her nose now, which was embarrassing even though the old woman took it in stride, but Rouge really couldn't help it.

She _won._

After awhile, through the tears that wouldn't stop and eyes that were closing despite all her efforts to keep them open, Rouge asked, “...My son? ...Ace?”

“Happy, healthy, and screaming the ears off the monkey-man, last I saw,” Rhysa answered. “Now _rest,_ you silly twit. You've more than earned it.”

Rouge opened her mouth to bite back at the old frog, but she was unconscious before she could.

 

**{2}**

 

“'S'not really stealin', izzit? 'S'mine.”

“I don't have a problem with stealing, Cee-san. I want to know which one of us is going to get in trouble for it,” Rouge said, seated on the deck and leaning against the mast, glaring at the troll woman munching arm-barnacles on her railing. “If you fall, I'm not going down with you.”

“Oho! Clever girl!” Cee declared, and if she was any more condescending, she'd have been patting Rouge on the head. “Don't ya worry 'bout it. That jerk can't do nuthin' 'bout me takin' back what's already mine. Ya get in and out without getting' caught, hand the prize off ta me, and he won't be able ta touch ya fer tha job.”

“And you can't get this... thing... back yourself because...?”

“Old Rules,” Cee answered bitterly, then spat off the side of the side. “Remember this, child o' D.: 's'all a Game, an' games have rules. If ya know tha rules right, an' yer clever, then even a minnow can win fer good against the biggest fishes, who all gotta play by tha rules too. You do me my favor an' I give ya that chance ta play for a prize... an' win.”

“Why can't you just do me a... favor... in return? You seem like you could.”

Cee grinned again, unkind and vicious. “Old Rules,” she answered again. “Yer too big a fish in this pond right now ta get direct help from me. Gave ya a show before, but I really can't touch ya 'til the babe's out, an' I can't touch tha babe at all. Ya gotta find a way to save him by yerself; an' take it fer yerself.”

Rouge pondered this for a few seconds. “And how do I know you're telling the truth? I've had clients lie to me about jobs before, and sometimes people don't play by the rules.”

“Oho! Ya would know! But don't worry, child o' D., it's just tha _real_ world that ain't fair. Everywhere else gotta follow tha Rules. Can bend 'em, but can't break 'em. ... I'm no' allowed ta be untrue; it goes against my nature.”

 

**{2}**

 

When Rouge woke up again, her head didn't hurt anymore, and she was able to enjoy the warm blankets and soft sheets and all the sensations of a real, physical world again. She'd known that she could win; she'd been determined to win; she'd fully believed that she _would_ win and had never doubted herself for a moment because she had _had_ to win. But... it was almost unreal... to be back to real life again.

It was dark outside now. Rouge turned her head and saw a young woman, early twenties perhaps, seated next to the bed and reading a book. She had a familiar look about her - brown skin and a long, dark braid - that proclaimed her to be one of Rhysa's numerous descendants, most likely a grandchild. The young woman looked up after a few seconds of Rouge's staring and promptly closed her book, which Rouge noticed had on the cover a very scantly-clad young woman swooning into the arms of a handsome man wearing a shirt that seemed to be suffering from many missing buttons.

That was definitely a sign that she wasn't playing the Game anymore.

“Oh! You're awake! Please don't move; you're hooked up to a few things, and we've been exercising your muscles for you, so, um, they might be a little sore,” the young woman said hurriedly. Then she plucked up a sheet of paper off the bedside table and cleared her throat to read it, then paused a second and explained, “Granny left a letter of important things for us to tell you when you woke up again.”

Rouge stared and waited for the woman to get on with it. Then she realized that the young woman was giving Rouge that same look of expectation that the youngest crewmembers had given her before they'd learned that it was okay to do things without asking the captain every time. She was probably waiting for some confirmation that Rouge was actually lucid at the moment.

“...O... kay,” Rouge said, voice still weak and hoarse.

“Great! Alright, here we go... _'Hello, twit. You've been fainting in and out of consciousness since you arrived two weeks ago. You were suffering from exhaustion, dehydration, malnutrition, hypovolemia, and a lot of other long-worded things that I don't want to write down at the moment. All you need to know is that you stay in bed or you die.'_ Um, that's not true, but you're in really bad shape so you really shouldn't get up, okay?”

Rouge couldn't really promise that, since she'd take her chances if she had to, but a response seemed necessary. “...Okay.”

“ _'My family has been caring for you since your arrival. The older one that you'll see is my daughter, Riika. The younger two are her daughters: Rina and Rita.'_ I'm, ah, Rita, by the way. _'Our village doctor, Doctor Bell, has been in and out to keep you from dying too. Remember to say thank you for all their efforts to keep your victorious butt alive.'_

“ _'As for your baby-'”_

Rouge stiffened and paid very close attention here.

“ _'He was happy and healthy last we saw. The monkey-man left Baterilla with him and we don't know where they went. No one's been by to ask after either of them and we haven't asked around. The monkey-man's been in the papers a few times, but that's the only news we've heard.'”_

Rouge sighed in relief, accidentally interrupting Rita's reading. Rita didn't seem to mind, only smiling indulgently. Rouge supposed that it was normal for new parents to be worried about their babies; she'd been worried enough that it had still been in the corner of her mind even when she'd been focused on winning her life back.

Rita cleared her throat again and kept reading. _“'This is where things get strange. You've been away on your gambling spree for ten years.'”_

Rouge froze.

Ten _years?_

Oh no. Oh, that cowardly, immature -

“ _'Time must pass differently when you're playing games, twit.'”_

\- selfish, prideful _sore loser!_

“Um... are you alright?”

Rouge looked at Rita again, who was eyeing her with no small degree of concern.

“If you're in pain still, I can-”

“No,” Rouge interrupted roughly. “No, no, thank you. Please... keep reading.”

“Uh, that's it, sorry,” Rita answered, looking extremely guilty about the fact that her old frog of a grandmother hadn't written any more shocks to drop on Rouge's head. “Is there... is there anything that I can, um, get for you?”

Rouge thought about it for a moment. “A Den Den Mushi?”

“Um, maybe?” Rita looked uncertain about it. “I think Granny has one somewhere that she uses to consult with midwives across the Blues. Everybody else is sleeping right now, but I think I should be able to find it if it's urgent.”

Rouge, all of her plans and promises collapsing and reforming in her mind, couldn't think of anything that was more urgent. “Please.”

“Alright. I'll, um, be right back. Wait right there!”

It didn't feel like Rouge could even sit up at the moment, much less get up and leave, but she bit down on the undeserved, angry words saying so that were bubbling at the tip of her tongue. It wasn't this woman's fault that the god that Rouge had borrowed from and bet against was a sore loser, and that time outside of the physical world worked slightly differently, but... _ten years._ That immature and prideful being had taken _ten years_ of life from her; if they'd lost with any sort of grace, Rouge should have been returned from the Game only having lost weeks. Or even days. A year at _most._

Although it did explain why Rouge's hazy memories of waking up to Rhysa's wrinkly face had the old woman looking even older than before. To be honest, ten years later and it was surprising that the old midwife wasn't dead yet, though Rouge was very grateful that she wasn't. Rhysa's assistance would go a long way to getting Rouge back on her feet again.

But a recovery would take time that Rouge didn't have to waste. And it would be even longer before Rouge was in sailing shape, and longer still until Rouge could return to fighting shape, and even longer still to get even halfway to the level she'd been at before her pregnancy.

So if Garp had taken her baby off to another of the Blues...

Ten _years._

 

**{2}**

 

Cee cocked her head as she held out her long arm, still as dripping wet as when she first appeared, and asked, “Yer no' gonna ask what happens ta ya if ya lose, child o' D? The Rules can't be broken, but some o' the big fish still know how to work 'em. Me lookin' at you now is proof enough o' that.”

Rouge took the long-fingered, slimy hand and grinned. “It's not important. I'm not going to lose.”

“Oho!” Cee grinned back, yellow teeth sharp enough to put a shark to shame. “Keep tha attitude, child o' D. Yer gonna need it.”

They shook.

 

**{2}**

 

“Found it!” Rita declared, scurrying back into the room with a Den Den Mushi, phone attached to the shell, that looked so ancient that Rouge thought she was looking at the snail version of Rhysa. “It was eating the plants in Granny's office. It's a bit old, but it's never lost a signal.”

Forget working, Rouge worried the thing might crumble to dust if she touched it.

“Oh!” Rita realized suddenly. “I guess you can't sit up, right? Um, I can help you with that.” The young woman carefully placed the Den Den Mushi on beside table, where the snail immediately started to slowly munch on Rhysa's letter. “I mean... if you're okay with that? Like, I've touched you lots while you were unconscious and, um, that sounds terrible. But if-”

“It's fine,” Rouge assured the girl with the sunniest smile that she could manage. She was grateful for the young woman's help, and if Rouge hadn't given up on embarrassment over bodily functions ages ago, she would have lost it entirely during giving birth. “You're very kind to be taking care of me so well. If you could help me up, I'd be very grateful.”

Cheeks slightly pinked, Rita re-organized the bed's pillows and helped Rouge into a sitting position, then handed Rouge the speaking piece. The young woman waited patiently with an empathetic expression as Rouge slowly, with an annoying amount of effort to be honest, dialed a number off the top of her head. After the Den Den Mushi started mimicking a ringing sound, Rita started fidgeting.

“Would you like me to give you some privacy, um... I'm sorry, but I don't know your name? Granny's just kept calling you 'twit' like she always does. I'm sorry.”

Rouge laughed, which was still little more than hoarse huffs and wheezes. “It's my fault for not introducing myself earlier, Rita-chan. My name is Rouge.” She nodded her head to imitate the bow that she couldn't perform. “It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

“It's very nice to meet you too, Rouge-san,” Rita replied, giving a small bow, cheeks still pink. “Would you like me to fetch you some water? Your voice still sounds a bit... um...”

“That would be lovely, Rita-chan. Thank you.”

With another funny little half-bow, Rita scurried back out of the room, and Rouge turned her attention back to the ringing Den Den Mushi. She hoped the number was still valid, and worried briefly over how, after ten years, there might be numerous reasons why its owner might not answer.

Rouge considered hanging up. If not for how much time had passed, she would not have been making this call. She shouldn't be making this call, really, but she desperately needed help and she desperately needed it fast and she didn't know who else to turn to. Who else was there who knew her secrets and would be inclined to help? Rouge would have to grovel... a _lot..._ but...

The ringing stopped and the telephone on the back of the Den Den Mushi made the click that signaled a call being answered; Rouge held her breath.

“ _Who is this and how the fuck did you get this number?”_ the snail suddenly demanded, scowling fiercely and sounding much like someone who had just stumbled out of bed.

Rouge suddenly recalled that it was quite late at night, and a lot of people were probably sleeping at the moment, and forgot just about everything else. It had been years since she'd last heard this voice, even without counting lost time, and that had been when she'd told (ordered) her first mate to go and live her own life and leave Rouge to live hers. It had been hurtful for the both of them, but Rouge's best friend had deserved to go and live a life for herself, to go find her own new dreams, no matter how selfishly Rouge had wanted to keep her friend by her side.

Rouge felt overwhelmed now because she'd missed her first mate _so much._ Through her pregnancy and the damn Game, Rouge had never stopped having to ignore how much she wanted her first mate at her side and having her back again. Even after almost two years of separation for Rouge (and about _twelve_ for her friend), it still felt so natural to reach out to her for help.

It was so _selfish,_ but Rouge was desperate.

“ _Seriously, who the fuck is this? If this is some sort of prank call, I swear that I will find a way to end your ass through this snail.”_

Rouge broke. “...Liz?” she choked out, quiet and small, voice likely unrecognizable through the tears and the hoarseness.

“ _Yeah?”_ the snail said after a few beats. _“Speaking.”_

Rouge cleared her throat and tried to speak with more volume and clarity. “It's... it's Rouge.”

There was a very long and very strained silence.

“...Liz? Did you... did you hang up?” Rouge asked after awhile – Liz would never do that, except that maybe after ten years things were different – though she was mostly certain that she hadn't heard the telephone click. “Liz? Are you... still there?”

“ _Where the fuck have you been.”_

Rouge had only heard her first mate so chillingly cold a handful of times, and all of those times had been at deathly serious moments. Yes, she would have a lot of grovelling to do if she ever wanted her first mate to speak to her again, it seemed, and even more if she wanted the woman's help.

And oh, Rouge _wanted_ just as dearly as she needed.

“Well...” Rouge started with a small, nervous laugh. “Dead... sort of. I fought for it. Didn't win until about two weeks ago. I accidentally missed a lot more time than I meant to, Liz.”

“ _...Dead.”_

Rouge felt herself tearing up again. “Yes. I'm... I'm so sorry, Liz, but... I... I...”

“ _Shut up.”_

The tears started again in earnest, but Rouge bit her quivering lip and shut up.

After another few moments, the snail said, _“Are you hurt?”_

“Well...”

“ _Answer me fucking honestly, Rouge.”_

“I paid a few prices for my... my baby. I'm an... an invalid at the moment.”

With that statement, Rouge was treated to the Den Den Mushi mimicking what sounded like a loud crash and a colorful assortment of shouted curse words that brought up fond memories. After a bit of grumbling and a lot more mumbled swearing, Liz spoke up again.

“ _...What happened to the baby?”_

Rouge choked up again, rubbing uselessly at her tears with her free hand and sniffling. “I don't know,” she admitted. “It's been _ten_ years, Liz... I don't know where my baby is. I don't – I don't know what to do, Liz. I'm so sorry but I need – I need your h-help – I have to f-find him. Please, Liz, I'm-”

“ _Where are you?”_

“Ba-Baterilla, in South Blue. I'm staying with – with the m-midwife who-”

“ _I'm on my way. If you put a toe out of bed before I get there, I'll kill you myself.”_

Then the telephone clicked as the connection was broken, and Rouge was left holding a useless speaker piece as the Den Den Mushi buzzed a dial tone. Rouge hung up, more out of habit than anything conscious, and the snail went back to eating the letter that it had been chewing on before.

Rita cautiously pushed the door open, a glass of water in hand, and padded quietly into the room. She placed the water on the table by the Den Den Mushi, grabbed a handkerchief, and started making soothing murmurs as she brushed Rouge's hair away from damp cheeks and gently mopped up tears. Rouge gratefully leaned into the young woman's arms and let herself cry.

Because she might have won, but she still _lost._

 

**{2}**

 

The next few weeks were peaceful and comfortable. The Troise family, which turned out to be a fairly large clan composed entirely of Rhysa's many children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, among other assorted relations, was experienced and adept at looking after people. Especially so with women recently recovering from giving birth and losing a child. They didn't treat Rouge like glass, but instead like a frequent guest of the household who needed space and a helping hand without any sort of judgment.

Rouge was regaining strength at an incredible rate according to Riika, though it wasn't nearly fast enough for Rouge. Her arms and legs looked thin as noodles, her spotty skin was blindingly pale, her muscles ached constantly, and she couldn't even sit up for a long period of time without getting horribly tired. It felt painfully slow, and Rouge's shrinking belly and bouts of bleeding as her body adjusted to not being pregnant anymore was progress that only reminded her that her baby was _gone,_ out there somewhere, and she'd missed _so much_ of his life.

It was a week before she was allowed to sparingly use Rhysa's spare wheelchair, an amount of time that was a miracle according to Doctor Bell, who was a handsome and serious woman that Rita's twin, Rina, flirted with almost desperately. As soon as Rouge was able to roll about the rest of the house, she was immediately invited to join in on various family activities like betting on when their young family member would give up being subtle and jump the good doctor.

Rouge was amused, but declined to join, feeling that it wasn't her place to interfere in the family's business. She also wasn't much in the mood for placing bets,after the Game, and she felt slightly melancholy at the memories that the couple dredged up.

Rouge wondered, after she'd disbanded her crew, if Liz had actually taken her advice and gone on to live her own life. Had Liz found a woman to settle down with? Had things ever been resolved between her first mate and her gunmaster? Rouge had been so focused on Roger and the baby that she hadn't thought about it much, not beyond sending a few good thoughts towards them and fondly remembering happier times.

Instead of joining in on Troise family antics, Rouge spent a lot of time reading newspapers and catching up on the world that she'd left behind. The Troises kept a lot of newspapers about to keep their floors clean of blood and other assorted birth fluids, so Rouge had more than enough of the things to get a lot of proof that the world had spun on without her.

It seemed that the 'Great Pirate Era' was still going strong, with a great many crews that Rouge had never heard of before, along with a few old names and faces. It was almost like just anyone could call themselves a pirate these days, the important ones standing above a crowd instead of simply surviving. People that she'd thought of as rookies were the new terrors of the seas, and Newgate seemed to be doing better than ever, which was a relief. Rouge looked forward to possibly seeing the man again someday; maybe after ten years he'd finally managed to grow a beard and his nickname would actually be accurate now.

The rest of Rouge's time was spent sleeping, sitting in the sunlight, sleeping in the sunlight, or eating as much food as she could physically get her hands on, to the surprise and awe of the Troise family for some reason. One would think they'd never seen a person with a healthy appetite before.

Sometimes Rouge would have a few conversations with Rita, who was a lovely girl with many romantic notions and very fun to tease, or play a few games of shogi with Riika's husband, who was almost depressingly delighted to have a conversation with someone that didn't involve vaginal dilation or umbilical cords. And Rhysa's great-grandchildren were wide-eyed darlings, eager for stories of life on the sea, although Rouge couldn't be around them too long without her heart feeling like it was going to break into pieces.

That was usually when Rhysa would wheel in, antagonize Rouge into bickering about complete nonsense, and then challenge Rouge to wheelchair races (much to Riika and Doctor Bell's frustration and unhappiness) and (much to Rouge's frustration and unhappiness) _win._

As a distraction, it worked; Rouge was fairly competitive, and had never lost anything to a woman old enough to be her grandmother before, even if Rhysa was far more experienced and capable in a wheelchair than Rouge would likely ever become. It was getting to the point where half of Rouge's frustration at being an invalid came from the fact that she kept on getting beaten – and beaten _badly –_ by Rhysa at even the simplest of physical tasks.

Rouge had once been a terror of the seas! Feared by pirates and marines alike! And yet... she was repeatedly getting her bony ass handed to her by a cackling old frog. It was infuriating to say the least and Rouge was _determined_ that this would not persist.

But even with distractions, almost all the time, through most of her daily activities, Rouge thought about her baby.

Where was he? What did he look like? What was _he_ like? What made him happy? Excited? Sad? What was his favorite color? Favorite food? Rouge wanted to know all these things and more, and it felt like she'd never wanted anything more in her life. Was he sweet? Fierce? Strong?

(Would he love her? After all this time?)

She could just contact Garp to find out where and how he was, but... she didn't know Garp's direct Den Den Mushi number. (Did he even have one?) So the only way she knew how to contact the man was through the Marines, and Rouge refused to make any sort of contact with the Marines until she was extremely desperate. Random women calling a vice-admiral might be considered somewhat suspicious, and Rouge would take no chances... yet.

She'd left Ace alone for _ten years._

Rouge wouldn't let her absurdly weak body stop her from finding him as soon as possible.

 

**{2}**

 

It was three weeks after Rouge had made the Den Den Mushi call that Baiebleu Eliza, who had once secretly been the infamous first mate of the Blackjack Pirates, landed on Baterilla.

With company.

 

 


	3. First Mate and Gunmaster

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"When she saw them, Rouge thought that her heart and lungs had been tied in a knot."_  
>  Rouge's first mate and gunmaster land on Baterilla and demand an explanation for their captain's disappearance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's been a bit of uploading trouble. Sorry.

 

Rouge was sitting in her wheelchair on the hill outside the Troise house, having been wheeled out by a yawning Rina and left, under several blankets to ward off any chill, to enjoy the sunrise over the South Blue sea. It was a beautiful sight and Rouge had missed it dearly, but it brought up a sad feeling in her chest to think that another day was dawning in which she was still reduced to only a shadow of who she'd been.

It was another day that Rouge was without her baby, without her crew, without her ship, and without Roger. And all but one of those things was her own fault.

One day and one day _soon,_ she promised herself, she would wake up to a beautiful sunrise and be setting sail again. She would be strong again, powerful again, capable of standing tall at a ship's wheel and shouting orders loud and clear, and she would sail off into the new day to find her son.

Rouge was quickly proven mistaken on one point though, as her pleasant morning was immediately interrupted by yelling – the sort of yelling that distinctly belonged to an argument where the people having it had lost all concept of public decency or volume control. The sound was deeply familiar to Rouge. As it came up the hill towards the Troise house, Rouge fumbled to turn around and prove to herself that she wasn't hearing things, that the voices weren't her own wishful thinking.

When she saw them, Rouge thought that heart and lungs had been tied in a knot.

Even after ten years, Liz looked almost exactly the same. Rouge's first mate was still tall and lean, all sharp angles and tough curves of muscle. The scars on her arms and chest had aged comfortably into her tawny brown skin, but her plum purple hair still stood out brilliantly against it, cut short and slicked up. Liz was even dressed more or less the same: sunglasses, sandals, cropped tube top, and belted jeans with a sword at each hip.

Liz has always liked her casual comforts.

But it wasn't Rouge's first mate who spotted Rouge first; it was the woman that Liz was yelling at at the top of her lungs as they ran up the hill together. Rouge's sharp-eyed gunmaster, unashamedly shouting with perfect enunciation back at Liz like sheer volume would decide the victor of their argument, suddenly cut off and stared at Rouge like she was seeing a ghost.

Rouge felt similarly.

Kanone Grieffe hadn't changed much either. Her silvery white hair was longer, the silky strands tied loosely at her neck and spilling down to the small of her back, and there were lines on her pale face that hadn't been there before, but she still had a familiar eyepatch over her right eye. Her wide curves were still mostly hidden under loose black pants and a green vest, both of which seemed to be made entirely of pockets, and she had her trusty guns tucked into her tool belt.

In their mid-forties now, Rouge realized with a smack of dismay at how much time she'd missed, they looked wonderfully well. Still the proud and powerful women that she'd left behind.

Grieffe suddenly stopping caused Liz to screech to a halt, then fling herself around to follow Grieffe's line of sight. Then, argument completely forgotten, Liz sprinted up the hill so fast that Rouge almost missed it while blinking some clarity into her watery eyes. Before Rouge really knew it, she was being yanked out of the chair and hugged within an inch of her life by her first mate, overwhelmed with the familiar scent of sour fruit and sword shine.

“BAIEBLEU-SAN, YOU BLIND FOOL; SHE'S IN NO CONDITION FOR YOUR CLUMSY MAULING,” Grieffe shouted, only seconds behind Liz, and then Rouge was dazedly back in the wheelchair and Liz was picking herself off the damp morning grass, glaring at Grieffe (to whom the scents of gunpowder and oil had clung to faithfully) and the offending foot that had kicked her off Rouge.

“Shit. Sorry for being fucking _happy_ to see someone!” Liz snapped, a hand on one of her swords.

Grieffe sniffed, laying a hand on her favorite pistol. “ _My_ apologies for being aware that Rouge-san, being an _invalid_ , should be handled with care instead of with the gentleness of a rampaging bull, and for being genuinely concerned for her health at your hands.”

“If you're fucking accusing me for a single second of risking the captain's health, you shitty, cannon-obsessed snowflake...” Liz began dangerously, the slow slide of blade against sheath making an ominous sound.

“Accusing? Hardly. Stating? Assuredly,” Grieffe answered coolly, flicking off the latch that kept her pistol in place at her belt with a sharp click.

Between them, too overjoyed and overwhelmed and pretty much over-everything to cope, Rouge burst into tears. The loud, ugly, bawling kind of tears too, which struck both of her crewmates and dearest friends dead silent... for about five seconds.

“For fuck's sake, Kanone, you made her cry!”

“ _I_ made her cry?”

 

**{3}**

  


Going back inside the Troise house felt almost like a dream to Rouge. A dark part of her had thought that maybe, after twelve years of separation, Liz might never come. Rouge definitely hadn't expected Liz to show up with another crewmember in tow, and with _Grieffe_ at that. It felt so unreal to be wheeled in between a jostling Liz and Grieffe again, who wouldn't stop snapping at each other while constantly adjusting Rouge's blankets and jumping to hilariously unified, extremely concerned attention if Rouge so much as coughed.

The kitchen was empty except for Rina blearily going through the motions of making tea, as it was apparently too early for the rest of the family to even consider being conscious. At their entrance, Rina only stared for a few seconds, as though simply trying to register them properly, then waved them towards the sitting room and informed them breakfast wouldn't be for another two hours.

Rouge quickly found herself cushioned in a bundle on a sofa, Liz and Grieffe seated in chairs across and both staring expectantly at her. Liz was even on the very edge of her seat, and though Grieffe was obviously trying to maintain a semblance of poise and patience, she was much the same.

“Well?” Liz said.

Rouge blinked at her, still slightly dazed at the sudden appearance of her friends and torn between bursting into tears again or grinning until her face hurt or both. “'Well', what?”

“What the fuck do you mean, 'well, what'?” Liz exclaimed. “It's been twelve fucking years and you were _dead!_ You said so yourself! What _happened?”_

“Rouge-san,” Grieffe said coolly, crossing her legs as though she thought Rouge hadn't worked out that was one of her nervous ticks decades ago, “Baiebleu-san promised I would receive an explanation from you in exchange for transport. And while the veracity of Baiebleu-san's promises is always dubious, I will have an explanation for this affair.” Her face screwed up in disgruntled confusion. “Baiebleu-san said something about a _child.”_

“I said shit; you were eavesdropping!”

“It is not my fault that you have the unbecoming habit of grumbling to yourself about your many issues in life,” Grieffe retorted, her single green eye fixed almost hungrily on her captain. “Rouge-san, _why_ did you disband the crew approximately twelve years ago?”

Rouge studied her gunmaster for a moment, confused. Grieffe sound... hurt? But why? Surely twelve years was more than enough time to be well over something that had been mostly inevitable. Surely Grieffe had, as Rouge had entreated (ordered) Liz, found a new life and dream for herself?

“I was pregnant,” Rouge answered evenly.

Grieffe stared disbelievingly, and, oddly enough, Liz did not tease the gunmaster for looking completely dumbfounded. Instead, Liz just looked grim as Grieffe took a few moments to come to terms with the information.

“Gol-san's?” Grieffe asked after a minute.

Rouge nodded.

Grieffe sat back in her seat, wide-eyed and pale. “Oh,” she said. “Oh _fuck.”_

It meant something significant that, even at that, Liz didn't comment. Instead, Rouge's first mate pushed her sunglasses into her hair and rubbed her eyes tiredly, before giving Grieffe an empathetic look and focusing an intense stare on Rouge.

“What happened, Rouge?” Liz demanded. “I wanna know, from the moment you dumped the fucking House Royale into my hands and sailed off into the sunset, to the damn Hero of the Marines telling the world that Redblack Jack was _fucking dead._ What _happened?”_

“Garp-san declared me dead?” Rouge asked.

Liz's glare could have burned a hole through a brick wall and Grieffe looked surprised that Rouge didn't know that fact. Grieffe opened her mouth to say something, but Liz flicked up a hand and cut the other woman off with a look. When Liz went cold and serious like that, it tended to be best for the crew to follow in the first mate's footsteps without question.

“No,” Liz said, pointing at Rouge. “Your story _first.”_

Under a stare that focused, Rouge had to relent. If she was going to grovel for help after ten years of being dead, then she owed Liz an explanation at the least. She picked at one of the blankets' strands for a few moments, then looked up and started talking.

“When I left, I was headed here – to Baterilla,” Rouge explained. “It's a good place. I had a lot of good memories here with Roger. You remember the time our crews spent around these waters, right?”

Liz's intense expression eased some; she snorted and leaned back into her seat. “Like we could forget how our captains went off to fuck knows where together and we had to spend our shore time in costume and with the Merry Band of Morons.”

Grieffe's eye twitched at this, but since her opinion of Roger's crew had been largely the same if not worse, it was probably at the reminder of them. Just considering the way her fingers twitched as well. Towards her gun.

Rouge huffed a small laugh at the both of them. “Yes, well... our time here together did not... go unnoticed,” she admitted, carefully not noticing the way Liz went still and Grieffe's grip suddenly clawed into the arm rest. “We unknowingly started more than a few rumors, enough to warrant interest, and the island was under surveillance by marines searching for a possible Pirate King's lover.”

Rouge didn't need to say that the Marines' determination in searching out anyone and anything even remotely connected to the Pirate King had been fierce. Her crew had been allies with the Roger Pirates and they'd felt the heat of that alliance, especially near the end; it was one of the several reasons that Rouge had loudly and publicly disbanded their crew and ended the Blackjack Pirates.

An action that had spared her crew, but also damned her.

“It was a mistake to so publicly announce Redblack Jack's retirement,” Rouge admitted. “I had marines on my tail the moment I left, determined to bring him in, to prove that there's no retirement for pirates. With the Marines following me and waiting at my destination, I could only stay ahead and try to figure out what to do and where to go.”

“ _Damn it,_ Rouge.”

Rouge ignored Liz's snarl. “About a week after Roger's... execution, I was five months pregnant and starting to get desperate,” she admitted further. “I wasn't sure how much longer I could stay ahead. I didn't know where to go. I was more or less adrift at sea.

“That... that was when I met a... woman. She didn't want to tell me her name, but she said I could call her 'Cee'. Only, she wasn't really a woman... she was god,” Rouge said, then amended, “Well, I think she was. She never confirmed to me exactly what she was.”

Rouge met Liz's wide-eyed and Grieffe's disbelieving stares steadily. She wasn't ashamed of the things she'd done to save her baby, and she _would_ be ashamed if she couldn't meet her crewmates eyes. Rouge had always made a point to meet people's eyes, no matter who they were. It was something that had, in hindsight, been somewhat akin to flinging herself off a cliff when she'd met Roger.

“Cee-san had some sort of dispute with another god,” Rouge continued. “He had taken something from her, and to get it back, he wanted something that she didn't want to give. She couldn't steal it back herself, so... she came to me.” Rouge laughed then, more weakly than she would have liked. “It turns out that even gods had heard that Redblack Jack was the best for the job.

“The only issue was that she couldn't pay me what I wanted. For some reason, no god could touch me until after I'd had my baby. Old Rules said that I had to save him or... or not... on my own. So what Cee-san did was tell me how to deal with gods – how the Old Rules worked – and when I took back Cee-san's stolen item... I took something else as well. I took a little bit of Time, just about a year of it.”

“Time...” Grieffe echoed.

Rouge nodded. “That sea – I called it the Gods' Blue and Cee started using it too after I did – has many impossible things. I can't describe most of them; some were wonderful, others were... terrible. I had my choice of them to try and save my baby, so I took a jar of Time. And when I gave Cee-san back what had been stolen from her, I told her what I wanted to do and she showed me how to use it to slow time very specifically. I managed to extend four more months of pregnancy to last nearly fifteen.”

If Liz's eyebrows went any higher, Rouge thought with inward amusement, they'd become a part of her hair. Grieffe, on the other hand, just looked hilariously dumbfounded again. Neither woman had ever had any interest in having children, in fact, they'd commonly expressed horror at the idea. Twenty months of pregnancy must have sounded like something out of one of their worst nightmares.

“Those months were... difficult,” Rouge went on, eager to gloss over months of stress and pain that didn't matter now. “I stayed ahead of the Marines, but mortals aren't meant to meddle with Time. It took a toll on my body, and the god that I'd borrowed from wasn't happy with my taking Cee-san's thing or the Time. I was... I was dying, and I knew that as soon as my baby was born, I'd have to face the god for my borrowing.”

Rouge raised one of her thin arms in example while she spoke, which seemed almost like a bone in comparison to the healthy fat and strong muscle that she'd had before. Liz and Grieffe stared at the pale limb with new horror and realization. Rouge really had wasted away – using the immortal Time on her mortal body had nearly completely leached her strength and health.

“At my twentieth month of pregnancy, my time was up. I had landed here on Baterilla, having lost the marines on Redblack Jack's trail and with the marines on lookout for a Pirate King's lover long gone, and came here to the Troise house to finally have my baby,” Rouge explained. “And once I did... I didn't last long.”

 _I died,_ Rouge didn't say, because that was both a truth and a lie and her crewmates didn't need to hear it spoken. By the look on Liz's face and by Grieffe's paleness, they could hear it well enough.

“The god that I'd angered brought me back to the Gods' Blue to take revenge, but... gods are immortal, fickle, and easily bored – it's partly why he stole from Cee-san. So I made a bet with him, I challenged him to a game and if I won, I'd go back to my mortal life, alive, and he could not interfere with me or my loved ones again. It interested him enough to play and... well.. I won.”

Rouge felt tears at the edges of her eyes then, from relief and loss. “I didn't think... I didn't think that he'd punish me for everything by returning me ten years later,” she said, voice hitching against her will as she started to blubber again. Surely she should have cried herself dry by now since waking up. “I never thought I'd be g-gone so l-long. I've missed so m-m-much of my b-baby's life.”

Liz was suddenly on her feet then and Rouge startled. “...L-Liz?”

And then Rouge's first mate was next to her on the sofa and hugging her again. Liz's arms were strong and solid as she pulled Rouge into her lap and Rouge's arms got pinned to her sides, too weak to break free. Liz had likely only gotten stronger where Rouge had wasted away, so all Rouge could do was bury her face into her first mate's neck and sob. Which was exactly what she did.

She'd missed Liz _so much._

After what felt like ten more years, Rouge became aware that Liz was making soothing murmurs as she rubbed her back, and that Grieffe had come to sit next to them on the sofa and had taken one of Rouge's hands. Rouge sniffed and pulled back, and Liz let her move back slightly while keeping Rouge firmly in her lap.

“For fuck's sake, Rouge, why'd you send me away?” Liz demanded almost brokenly. “I would have _helped_ you.”

Rouge shook her head. “No, you d-deserved to live your own life,” she insisted. “Roger and the baby were my new dream, not the life you p-promised to follow. You deserved to find your new dream.”

Liz stared at her for a long while, wide-eyed and incredulous, then threw back her head and broke into hollow laughter. “How are you _still_ such a moron?” she asked when she met Rouge's eyes again. “You're my _captain,_ Rouge. You're my _friend._ I would have followed you _anywhere.”_

“But you didn't _have_ to,” Rouge tried to explain. “You shouldn't have to.”

“I wanted to! Damn it, Rouge, you should have let me _choose.”_

“You should have let the both of us choose,” Grieffe said from Rouge's other side. “I would have chosen to keep following you too, Rouge-san. You should not have tried to force us away from the lives we had already chosen for ourselves.”

“Did you think that we'd go off to get married and have kids ourselves or something?” Liz demanded, clearly only half-joking by the serious look in her eyes. “Fuck's sake, Rouge, that's not us; that's what we had _you_ for!”

“Indeed,” Grieffe agreed solemnly, giving a distasteful shudder at the mere idea.

Liz nodded, looking equally disgusted, then an idea clearly dawned on her face. “I can't believe you left me behind to go challenge _gods,_ Rouge. The fuck, woman? Why would you go and do something badass like that without _me?”_

Rouge stared at her first mate, then looked at her gunmaster, who stared evenly back at her before cocking a single eyebrow in question. Then Rouge looked back at Liz's mortally offended expression and burst out laughing, because she'd imagined her first mate's reaction to dealing with gods and she'd been exactly right. Liz feared no fight.

“I'm sorry,” Rouge gasped into Liz's shoulder between bouts of laughter, trying not to focus on the hilarity of Liz and Grieffe's equally unimpressed expressions. “I'm sorry! I'm sorry!”

Then something hitched in her chest again, because she'd made so many mistakes, and she started to cry again, choking out apology after apology for everything she'd done.

Liz just sighed tiredly and hugged her tight.

  


**{3}**

  


After the tears were over, and Rouge had basically soaked her first mate through with an incredible amount of salt water and snot like the old times all over again, Grieffe finally spoke up again.

“What is his name?”

Rouge turned to look at her gunmaster.

“Your baby,” Grieffe clarified. “What is his name?”

“Portgas D. Ace,” Rouge told her, smiling at the memory of naming her baby and holding in her arms for a few precious, perfect moments.

“That is a lovely name,” Grieffe complimented loyally.

“Oh, thank fuck, you didn't give him that good-for-nothing's name,” Liz said, sounding far more relieved about the fact than Rouge felt was strictly necessary. “I was worried out of my fucking mind that you'd do something stupid like that.”

“Roger was _not_ a good-for-nothing,” Rouge reprimanded her first mate, glaring at her gunmaster when Grieffe scoffed lightly and didn't even look guilty about it. Unsurprising, really, since there was very little Grieffe gave enough of a damn about to regret.

“He was too old to be suitable for you,” Grieffe said.

“He was _not.”_

“Yes, he was,” Liz said cheerfully. “He was an ugly old man who didn't deserve you.”

The way Liz said it, it was uncertain which of those traits was the worst – ugly, old, or man.

Rouge smacked her first mate's shoulder, which did exactly nothing in her weakened state, and glared (sulked) at them both. If there was one thing that both Liz and Grieffe agreed on despite their differences, it was that they should have skipped giving the fearsome Pirate King the shovel talk (something Roger had both found hilarious and taken embarrassingly seriously) and just 'hit him with the fucking shovel and buried his worthless, rotten hide' instead.

“Though Baiebleu-san is as inarticulate and unpleasant in her sentiments as she has ever been, we will be both be capable of ignoring that less-than-admirable part of your son's heritage,” Grieffe said then, like both a suggestion to Liz and an offer to Rouge that she clearly felt was more than generous.

“Already fucking _done,”_ Liz replied, still cheerfully.

Rouge sighed, rubbing her hands over her tear-stained face, but she couldn't stop the smile tugging at her lips. It was nice to see that some things hadn't changed, even if it was her friends' unyielding, mostly-mock disapproval of the man she loved. She likely could have been gone for fifty years and an old Liz still would have been game to shit-talk about Roger in her rocking chair.

Rouge giggled at the mental image, something that she had always been prone to after crying her eyes out, which got her a suspicious look from Liz that just made her giggle more. After a bit of suspicious staring, Liz just snorted disgustedly and gently shoved Rouge off her lap. Rouge landed in a giggling bundle of blankets between her crewmates, feet in Liz's lap and head in Grieffe's, who looked absolutely done with the both of them.

“Rouge-san,” Grieffe said, looking down at her captain with what was probably fondness for her. “We will certainly assist you in rejoining your son. What are our leads? Where did you see your son last? Do you know who he was entrusted to?”

“Ah,” Rouge said. “Um...”

Liz groaned. Nearly a dozen years later and she could still recognize her captain's guilty expressions and tones with her eyes closed and ears plugged. “Damn, what the fuck'd you leave out?”

“When I reached Baterilla,” Rouge began cautiously, “not... all the marines were gone.”

Grieffe went stone-faced and Liz dropped her head back onto the sofa... repeatedly.

  


**{3}**

  


“You gave him to fucking _Garp?”_

“Roger asked Garp to look after Ace for him,” Rouge answered.

Liz and Grieffe exchanged an unreadable look between them, then Grieffe leaned over Rouge and took one of Rouge's hands gently in her own.

“Rouge-san, I mean no offense to you when I say this, as you are a lovely individual who possesses the admirable trait of holding your loved ones in high esteem, but perhaps you may wish to consider the point that-”

“Roger was _fucking insane,”_ Liz interrupted.

Grieffe's eye twitched violently as she turned to look at Rouge's first mate.

“What?” Liz demanded of the gunmaster.

“Baiebleu-san, have you _ever_ heard of tact?”

“Oh, come on. He was batshit crazy and you've said it yourself! Seriously, Rouge!”

Rouge recalled the love of her life's intense personality and unique worldview. “Yeah,” she sighed dreamily, unable to help herself. Roger had been a force of nature. “He was, wasn't he?”

Liz and Grieffe stared.

“I can't believe I forgot how shit your taste in men is,” Liz said disbelievingly.

Grieffe coughed into her hand. “I disagree with the phrasing but concur with the sentiment. Rouge-san, trusting Gol-san's inexperienced judgment in the area of childcare may not have been the most-”

“Fuck, we have to find that kid _yesterday._ Shit.”

Grieffe's eye twitched violently again. “Baiebleu-san, if you have the time along the way, please do the world a favor and throw yourself off a cliff.”

“You fucking wish, snowflake.”

“Hmm. It seems then that I, being the only member of this group with any common sense or manners, will be making the necessary calls to our informants,” Grieffe said, lifting her chin and adjusting her eyepatch. “Rouge-san, rest well knowing that I will find out what the Marine Hero has done with your son.”

Rouge grinned up at her gunmaster, sunny and delighted. “Thank you, Grieffe.”

Grieffe nodded, adjusting her eyepatch again and shifting in her seat with her cheeks slightly pinked. “It is no issue at all for me to assist you in whatever manner necessary,” she assured Rouge. “Think nothing of the matter; your recovery should be the absolute subject of your focus.”

“I will get right on that,” Rouge assured her, lifting a hand to pat Grieffe on the cheek.

Someone knocked on the door frame then, and Liz and Grieffe turned to look while Rouge struggled to sit up. Liz's hand on her chest wasn't helping her efforts – it might as well have been a rock wall.

“Hey... We're about to get started on breakfast now,” Rina said. “Are you two staying for that?”

“If you don't mind,” Liz replied, pushing Rouge back down effortlessly.

Grieffe nodded. “We would much appreciate your hospitality, Troise-san.”

“Liz, let me up!”

“No, you're going to stay where you can't pull any more stupid, shitty stunts. I've decided.”

“Liz!”

“While Baiebleu-san's ideas are normally next to worthless, this mutiny is simply necessary for the good of your weakened health, Rouge-san.”

“Not you too, Grieffe!”

“Fuck's sake, stop resisting the mutiny, Rouge.”

“Uh... I'll just... go,” Rina told them, backing out of the room slowly.

  


**{3}**

  


Grieffe walked forward and placed herself where Rouge had been sitting when they had found her, looking out over Baterilla and the South Blue sea in the late morning sun. It was very beautiful, and it was not difficult to imagine her captain and Gol choosing this picturesque, pleasant, and quiet island for their romantic getaways. It was the perfect place for two dangerous pirates to pretend that they were nothing more than a couple in love – a place where dreams could be born.

And, in turn, children. It was here on this small, seemingly insignificant island that the child of Portgas D. Rouge and Gol D. Roger had, with so much effort and sacrifice, against the wills of gods and men, been born.

Grieffe could not imagine loving someone like that. Of course, she loved a certain number of people enough to die for them, but not in the way and to the degree that her captain did. Like Eliza and her bloodthirsty swords, Grieffe's true love had always been for the thunder of cannon-fire and the satisfying lightning strike of a bullet hitting home. For the clank of heavy gears turning and the swing of a pulled lever. For the quick clicks of her pistols and the first flash of fire taking hold.

She was and always had been a creature of creation and destruction, but with gunpowder and metal, oil and gears. Grieffe had not known what to do with herself when Rouge had found her new dream; she had always expected that she would die at sea, in flames, and had been completely unprepared for living a life without the sweet _boom_ of mortar over the waves.

Now, Grieffe was at somewhat of a loss again, and was seriously considering blowing something up or setting something on fire to cope with all this new information. These secrets! These were the sort of secrets that you knew in your bones you should not know because of the sheer, inherent danger of knowing them. These were the sort of secret that – far beyond false names and faces – would end up killing you, and Grieffe had enough of those already.

She could almost already see the Marine fleet on the horizon.

It would be... ironic, although not entirely unexpected, if she died at the hands of her own creation... her revenge that the Marines had taken and twisted. 

Grieffe did not look around at the almost soundless footsteps coming up behind her. Twelve years of separation and Grieffe could still recognize the first mate of her ship from an island away. She had once been known as the one of the dangerous marksmen in the world, and she would be a pitiful gunmaster if her sense of observation were solely dependent on her sight, anyway.

Eliza came up on Grieffe's left side – the side without the eyepatch – and the taller woman offered Grieffe a cigarette. Grieffe gave the first mate the disdainful look that that deserved. She had never smoked in her life, despised it as a habit and mere concept, and...

“I thought you quit that disgusting practice years ago, Baiebleu-san.”

Eliza shrugged, tucking the cigarette away in her jeans pocket. “I did; haven't for years. One of the family offered and I figured I might as well offer you the same health-destroying opportunity, Kanone. Kind of mind-blowing shit, isn't it?”

“Stolen time, godly games, and coming back from the dead? Without a doubt,” Grieffe scoffed, still trying to wrap her mind around the sheer impossibility that her captain accomplished. “A child? Even more so.”

Eliza sighed. “Yeah.”

They stood in silence for a few minutes, looking out over the island and waves, enjoying the calm after their frantic flight through the Blues. Breakfast with the Troise family had been interesting, if... loud, and a warm, home-cooked meal had definitely been appreciated after their weeks at sea. Grieffe had been relieved to find that Rouge had managed to find good, capable people to take care of her in her severely weakened state.

It was... daunting to see their captain so thin and unhealthy. All the excitement from their arrival and due explanations had tired Rouge out, and their captain had fallen asleep at the table almost as soon as the meal was over. As they had carted her off to bed, one of the Troise midwives had described Rouge's recovery rate as incredible, but warned them that it would be some time yet before Rouge was fit to travel anywhere.

The extremely old woman in the wheelchair had snorted at that. She clearly had a much more accurate idea of their captain's character than the others. Now that Rouge had Eliza, Grieffe, and transport, it would be a miracle if they could hold her from searching for her son for another full week.

Those of the Will of D. had always been... adamant about the safety and happiness of their loved ones, Grieffe has experienced their ferocious adoration firsthand enough times to know that well.

“Somewhere out there exists the child of Portgas D. Rouge and Gol D. Roger,” Grieffe said, letting the dangerous statement hang questioningly in the air.

Grieffe wondered why she had not been trusted with the knowledge of this. Eliza had obviously at least known of the pregnancy and child, likely for as long as Rouge herself had known, and that Rouge had not had that same faith in Grieffe, her second mate, was hurtful. But... then again, Eliza's loyalty to and love of the woman who had literally stolen her was unequaled, and this was a heavy, deathly secret that Grieffe herself might not have dared to speak aloud. Grieffe knew nothing of children, never wishing to continue her family's line, never having been permitted to truly be one, and would have been of no assistance. 

Eliza's face was grim as she sighed, obviously wishing for the awful little stick of vice in her pocket, and said consideringly, “Somewhere out there... exists a child born of _two_ wielders of the Will of D. And worse: somewhere out there exists the child of _Redblack Jack,_ the World's Most _Stubborn_ Thief, who has defied governments, gods, and death, and the Pirate King himself, the most dangerous man to ever walk the face of the planet.”

After a small silence, Eliza barked out hollow laughter. “Somewhere out there,” she said dryly, as though telling the funniest joke in the world, “exists a child that the whitecoats would give _fucking anything_ to have never been born, but who somehow made it anyway. How about that, eh, Kanone?”

Grieffe had no reply for that, but Eliza obviously did not expect one by how she turned away without waiting for an answer. They ended up standing in silence on the hilltop together, thinking about impossible things made possible and what surely marked the end to twelve empty years.

By the twitching of her hands, Eliza was obviously itching for a dozen packs to go with the cigarette in her pocket, and Grieffe wanted to reach for the matches in her tool belt to start making things smoke herself. She would be much more comfortable with her world being turned on its head if she could stabilize herself with a bit of released firepower – perhaps released on the marines that would threaten her captain and her captain's son. Grieffe had recently installed upgrades in the ship that would service well for that.

“How do you think Rouge-san will react to seeing the House Royale again?” Grieffe wondered.

Eliza just shot her an amused look.

“Ah, more crying, of course.”

  


 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know this has been pretty slow-moving so far, but they're setting sail next chapter and Ace will make his appearance very soon after that.  
> Anyway, I hope Liz and Grieffe are going over well. If you'd like to see what they look like, you can find them [here](http://lullabyknell.tumblr.com/post/133436520448/a-bit-of-concept-art-for-my-one-piece-fic-rouge). Or in the Art Companion which is the next fic in this series 'Back From The Dead Red'.  
> The House Royale is the Blackjack Pirates ship, which I'm not drawing because... well... no.


	4. Sunrise Sail

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On the hunt for information, Rouge and crew talk to an old friend who gives them a lead on Rouge's son. With two new crewmembers, they set sail.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was fun.

 

For Rouge, everything suddenly seemed ten times better now that Liz and Grieffe had arrived. The acute feeling of loneliness that had threatened her during her pregnancy and since her return was significantly lessened. Her depression was made much more bearable with her friends' unwavering and unconditional support – whether she was deserving of it was still uncertain to her – as well as their antics to distract from Rouge's lost baby, dead lover, and invalid status.

It was hard to feel sad in a warm bundle of blankets on a comfortable sitting room chair, laughing herself to tears at Liz's disgruntled look and Grieffe's impassive expression but embarrassed posture. She'd been wondering how and why Liz and Grieffe had arrived together, since it was unlikely that Liz would seek Grieffe out in her rush to reach Rouge and apparent that they'd spent the past dozen years apart. But Rouge hadn't expected _this._

“You were living on the _same_ island and didn't know it?” Rhysa's granddaughter, Rina, demanded of them. Her spread of foreign medical books left ignored between her and Rita as the twins gave up their quiet study in the otherwise empty room, instead staring in complete disbelief at the older women. “How could you be living on the same island and not even _know?”_

“We had both previously enjoyed our time at the island, which is reasonably large, and made independent decisions to settle there at different times without consulting the other,” Grieffe explained, a faint flush to her skin as she adjusted her eyepatch. “Also, the fact that we lived on opposite sides of the island must be brought into consideration.”

“I traveled a bit, too,” Liz said defensively, crossing her arms over her broad chest.

“Our social calendars and schedules simply happened not to overlap at any point,” Grieffe added, ignoring Liz's amused snort. “We do not keep similar hours. Any locations or events we had in common, such as monthly markets, we visited at vastly different times and any ac-”

“You didn't _have_ a social calendar, snowflake.”

Grieffe's eye twitched and she sent Liz a haughty look. “Precisely,” she said.

Liz stared, then snorted again. “Whatever. Hey, Rouge, you can stop fucking laughing any day now.”

If anything, that just made Rouge laugh harder. Liz and Grieffe sounded _so_ embarrassed that they'd managed to live on the same island and have no idea! If Rouge didn't know them both so well, she would have no idea how such intelligent, cunning, and worldly women could be such idiots, but she did, and Liz and Grieffe had _always_ been like this with each other.

“Then... if you didn't, um, know... how did you find out?” Rita asked, looking adorably confused.

Liz and Grieffe exchanged another look. Liz was the first to look away, and dropped her head against the back of her chair with a groan.

“Rouge-san's call caused Baiebleu-san to be at the docks at an hour she normally would not have been. She was being extraordinarily loud and disruptive about obtaining immediate transport and I could not help but notice,” Grieffe answered. “I went to investigate and came face to face with a face that I, in the moment of meeting, would have preferred not to.”

Oh, what Rouge wouldn't give to have been a fly on the wall in that moment of meeting. If it went anything like their very first meeting, then she's sure that it was absolutely glorious to witness.

“You _hit_ me,” Liz said mulishly, not breaking her staring match with the ceiling.

Grieffe adjusted her eyepatch and said, “I have already told you repeatedly, Baiebleu-san, that it was an accident. I was surprised. I have apologized for the incident, and, if we are to be just about the matter, it was _payback long overdue.”_

Liz grumbled, but didn't bite back at Grieffe, who'd been milking Liz's guilt over their disastrous first meeting for years. Instead, Liz turned to glare at her captain, who had gotten to the point where she didn't have the breath left to give her laughter any sound. Rouge was sliding so far down in her seat that she'd fall to the ground if she went any farther.

“Oh, shut up, Rouge,” Liz said.

 

**{4}**

 

The days seemed to pass much more quickly too. Rouge had not said anything, but she did not need to, her friends knew her well and her new fervor for her strengthening exercises told them loud and clear. In response, Liz had taken to casually interrogating the Troise midwives and Doctor Bell for information on Rouge's condition and the necessary care she'd need, and Grieffe spent hours making calls on the Troise family's ancient Den Den Mushi. They were preparing to leave, and to leave soon.

Riika and her twin daughters hadn't caught on, nor had the rest of the family, but Rouge had caught Rhysa giving her a few considering looks between cackling taunts and wheelchair race challenges. Rouge's recovery rate had increased since Liz and Grieffe's arrival, as well as her raw determination, and she was more or less consistently keeping up with the old frog now.

Just inside of a week after Liz and Grieffe's arrival, Grieffe reported that she'd located and been in touch with their very closest old informants as her Blackjack Pirates identity. A dozen years ago, their network had been vast and solid, but it was slow work to start re-establishing things after so long a silence, and they had to be careful of any dangerous changes made in their absence from the Blues. Rouge was nowhere near ready to bring Redblack Jack back from the dead, so calling in a lot of favors was out, and this was far too sensitive to simply start throwing out demands for the suspiciously specific information they wanted.

A few days after that, Grieffe walked into the sitting room with the ancient Den Den Mushi under one arm and the speaking piece in her hand. On the sofa, Liz looked up from the play she was reading, and Rouge looked over from the game of shogi that she was playing against both Rina and Rita, who were currently bickering quietly over their next move while Rhysa watched them with a wicked, wrinkly grin.

Grieffe stared solemnly at Rouge, a hand covering the speaking piece. “An old contact wishes to know why I have come out of retirement to seek information,” she said. “Considering the individual, I believe it would be... beneficial to seriously consider the matter.”

Liz put down her book as Rouge excused herself to the twins, who both nodded as they continued arguing over their next move, and wheeled herself back from the board. Rouge was about to ask who in the world it could possibly be that Grieffe wanted to actually tell them the truth – _Grieffe,_ of all people, who had preferred to wear her Blackjack Pirates identity around everyone but Rouge or Liz – but Rhysa interrupted her before she could say anything.

“Take it in my office, twit,” Rhysa said casually, her old eyes sharp and knowing. “I don't wanna listen to your silly business and be brought into the mess.”

Rouge stared at the old frog for a long moment, then nodded. With that sign, Liz, who had crossed the room during this exchange, wheeled Rouge out of the sitting room and down the hall to Rhysa's office where Grieffe had set up base, with Grieffe following silently behind. Once insist, Liz planted Rouge in front of the desk, Grieffe put the Den Den Mushi down in front of her, hand still covering the speaking piece, and Liz went to shut the door on the quiet sounds of Rina and Rita's bickering and other assorted everyday Troise family noises.

“Who is it?” Rouge asked her gunmaster.

“Shakuyaku-san; she runs a bar on Sabaody Archipelago now,” Grieffe replied, face still solemn like before. “Listen.”

Then Grieffe held the speaking piece up to her mouth, paused a moment and flicked it on, then spoke in the deeper tones that had once been known and feared across the Blues due to how they were usually followed by deadly cannon-fire. “Shakuyaku-san, thank you for your patience in this matter.”

The snail made a puffing sound like the exhale of a cigarette, then said in a familiar voice, _“Simon, dear, if it took you that long to come up with a lie to answer my question, then maybe you really shouldn't be coming out of retirement.”_

“I needed to consult someone on the matter,” Grieffe told their old acquaintance, friend, and occasional ally. “Please inform them of the same changes in your life that you did me.”

“ _Oh, is John there?”_ the snail asked, looking intrigued. _“Put John on.”_

Rouge and Grieffe looked towards Liz, who had been grinning like a maniac since the snail had first spoken. Grieffe sighed and handed the speaking piece over to Liz, who took it gleefully and immediately struck one of the seductive poses that inevitably came with her charming and flirtatious identity as the first mate of the Blackjack Pirates. Grieffe's eye twitched in a way that looked painful, but Rouge was eager to watch her charismatic friend back at work.

“Shakky, you beautiful love and brilliant light of my life,” Liz crooned in a deep, smooth voice that had once made women all across the Blues go weak in the knees. “I've spent far too long in this desert of a world without the oasis of your youthful beauty and sharp tongue. I've missed you so.”

Rouge had to grab Grieffe's arm to keep her gunmaster from intentionally hitting her head against the nearest wall. Grieffe had heard Liz say far worse, to _her face_ and in _all_ seriousness, but it seemed that Grieffe's tolerance for Liz's outrageous flirting had disappeared over their years of separation.

“ _Oh, John, darling,”_ the snail said with a low laugh, _“I've missed you too. Where have you been?”_

“Absolutely lost without you in my life,” Liz answered promptly. “What are these changes that have been brought up, my ageless spring flower? Be gentle with your admission, my sweet heart of hearts, lest you break this poor pirate's heart.”

“Grieffe, stop, you're going to give yourself brain damage,” Rouge whispered.

“My brain is already irreparably damaged for having to witness such worthless drivel, Rouge-san. Please release me so that I may cleanse my mind with pain.”

The snail chuckled, then exhaled slowly. _“Ah, but, John, you left me so very lonely. What was a brokenhearted woman to do but get married?”_

Liz froze, then looked at Rouge and Grieffe, who were wide-eyed and extremely unimpressed respectively. Grieffe raised her eyebrow at Liz, like, _yes, you heard that correctly,_ and Liz turned back to the Den Den Mushi and her masterful persona.

“Oh, Shakky... why must you hurt me in this way?” Liz asked, the very sound of devastation.

Rouge looked up at Grieffe. “Married?” she whispered.

Grieffe nodded, then looked at Liz and said quietly, “Ask who.”

“Who is this undeserving scoundrel who has stolen my very soul from me?” Liz asked, fitting the question seamlessly into her dramatic heartbreak. “Shakky, my gorgeous angel, who is this unworthy individual that you have so generously chosen to upon bestow your sweet, heavenly blessings?”

“ _Why, Silvers Rayleigh, of course,”_ the snail replied with a sly smile. _“Without you, John, I had to find another infamous first mate who would do. Now, Ray-san and I are very happy together.”_

Liz, who had frozen again, said more on reflex than anything else, “Oh, you wound me, my love.” Then she switched off the speaking piece, turned to Rouge, who had gone starry-eyed with romantic delight, and Grieffe, who just looked completely done with everything about this, and said very softly, “...What the _fuck?”_

Rouge, who had clasped her hands together when Shakky had announced the news, squealed breathlessly in excitement. “Oh, that's so sweet! I'm so happy for them! I never thought Ray-san and Shakky-chan would find love together! How wonderful!”

“At least Shakuyaku-san picked the most bearable and sensible one of the... how did Baiebleu-san put it...? 'Merry Band of Morons',” Grieffe offered blandly. “Unlike another certain individual in this room that I could name, who did the exact opposite.”

Rouge smacked Grieffe on the thigh without looking and kept being absolutely delighted for her dear friends. “Roger would have loved this! We should get them a wedding gift! Oh, this is so exciting!”

“Focus, Rouge!” Liz snapped. “We gotta figure out what this shit means and what we're gonna tell Shakky, and _then_ we can send them a wedding gift in a big fucking bow.”

Rouge frowned at her first mate's unacceptable unenthusiastic response, then stuck out her hand for the speaking piece. “I can be happy for my friends and focused on my goals at the same time, Liz,” she reminded her first mate. “This changes things. Give me the speaking piece; I'm going to talk to her.”

“I thought we weren't bringing Redblack Jack back from the dead to our informants and contacts,” Liz said with a harsh scowl. She turned the fearsome look on Grieffe, probably for first suggesting that they reveal anything to Shakky in the first place.

“We're not,” Rouge answered coolly. “But this is Shakky-chan and Ray-san, Liz; they're _friends._ Besides, Shakky-chan alone was one of our best chances of useful information – we both know that Shakky-chan has made a number of highly-educated and accurate guesses about the Blackjack Pirates – and she's married to _Ray-san_ now. Give me the speaking piece.”

Liz didn't look happy about it, probably because her protective instincts around Rouge were at least ten times worse than they'd used to be for obvious reasons, but she handed the device over and switched the speaking piece back on anyway.

Rouge lifted it to her mouth, dropping her voice back into a tone and pitch that almost felt like a lifetime away now. “Shakuyaku,” Redblack Jack said, a little rough but still infamously recognizable. “Congratulations on your marriage. My best wishes to you and Rayleigh both.”

The snail was quiet for so long that Rouge checked the telephone to make sure that the speaking piece was actually on, which it was, which meant that Shakky was just being silent.

“ _...Jack?”_ the snail said finally.

Rouge let a low chuckle leave her throat. “Hello, Shakuyaku. I'm afraid that rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated. I've just been... away for some time and certain assumptions were made. How have you been?”

“ _...Well, thank you.”_

“And your husband? How is he? I would appreciate speaking with him again.”

The snail was quiet for a few moments, then said with a touch of sorry amusement, _“Ray-san can't seem to get the sea out of his soul; he likes to spend time traveling where the winds take him. I haven't seen him in a few months, Jack. Should I tell him you called when he gets back?”_

Rouge inwardly sighed in disappointment, because she would have liked to speak with Roger's first mate again, but she wasn't surprised that Rayleigh was drifting about for some adventure. From what Liz had revealed, Rouge's first mate had done more or less the same thing these past twelve years. Maybe it was a first mates' thing? Rouge had a feeling Liz would give her that disbelieving, my-captain-is-a-moron look if she asked, so it was probably a first mates' thing.

“Please do,” Rouge said. “And... if you would be obliged, take a picture when you do.”

“ _Oh, what a wonderful suggestion. I'll do that,”_ the snail promised with dark glee. _“I think I'll put it on the wall of my bar and look at the photograph whenever I miss him.”_

“That way she will not miss him for long,” Grieffe murmured to Liz, who snorted.

Rouge ignored her gunmaster and first mate, and said, “Shakuyaku, I am sure that you have guessed that this is not a social call to catch up or celebrate my recent return. Simon has been resurrecting our information network because I am searching for something. I was going to keep my return a secret for the foreseeable future, but I believe you may be able to help me with my search.”

The snail made a humming sound. _“You've come to the right person for information, Jack. I'm glad that you aren't as the rumors have made you out to be. How can I help you?”_

“Ah, Shakuyaku, you are a friend. As clever and knowing as you are, I am sure that you have guessed why I went into retirement over a decade ago.”

There was a brief silence before the snail said, _“Ray-san has told me that his late captain has a child, yes. I had a few guesses as to whom the other parent might be, from your... friendship with Roger, and how my Ray-san mourned your death, along with some things he said after a... conversation that he had with Vice-Admiral Garp.”_ There was a pause, then the snail added wryly, _“Congratulations yourself, Jack.”_

“Thank you,” Rouge replied, shooting a brief, hah-I-told-you-so look at Liz, who just scowled. “Due to my absence, I had to entrust my treasure to the man you just mentioned, and now I find that I don't know where to begin looking. I could contact him directly, but his occupation makes that difficult, and I would prefer to keep the Marines out of this entirely.”

“ _Understandable, Jack,”_ the snail said, making another puffing exhale. _“I'm afraid that neither Ray-san nor I know where your treasure is, but I can tell you a good place to start if you're looking to trace the vice-admiral's movements. Do you remember young Shanks?”_

Liz immediately snorted, then doubled over in silent, body-shaking laughter, choking out a disbelieving, “Does she fucking remember Shanks, oh my fuck, how could anyone fucking forget?” And Grieffe, meanwhile, wasn't much better, and the gunmaster was slowly turning pink as she clapped both hands over her mouth to prevent herself from making any noise. Rouge scowled at them both, getting a burning feeling in her face at the mere memory of the teenage boy – who would be a grown man now, she remembered.

“I do,” she told Shakky, which just made Liz collapse entirely onto the floor and Grieffe hunch into the nearest wall, shoulders shaking. Rouge ignored them, as well as the burning in her cheeks. “He seems to be doing extremely well for himself. Are he and Rayleigh still in touch?”

“ _Oh yes, he's come to visit a few times, and he calls every now and again. Ray-san's not always here when he calls, so we chat sometimes. He's such a sweetheart and his first mate is a delightfully intelligent darling – reminds me of a younger Ray-san. But anyway, for about a year, he was using Dawn Island in East Blue as a base, and he told Ray-san something interesting about his time there.”_

“Oh?” Rouge prompted, and Liz and Grieffe both stopped laughing to actually pay attention.

“ _Apparently he met an interesting boy there named Monkey D. Luffy, who reminded him so much of Roger that he gave the boy his straw hat,”_ the snail said. _“Now, I doubt he's the treasure you're looking for, since he was born three years after your death and the Revolutionaries have taken some interest in the island's Goa Kingdom, but the vice-admiral is known in the area according to young Shanks and it seems like a good place to use as base and start your search. I hear you may even have an old crewmember settled there.”_

For a long moment, Rouge could only stare at the wrinkly old Den Den Mushi, and behind her, Liz and Grieffe were utterly still, partly because Dragon had had a _kid?_ (Either that or _Garp_ had another one, which seemed infinitely worse.) Then Rouge slowly lifted the speaking piece back up to her mouth, forcibly stopped her arm from its shaking, and spoke.

“Shakuyaku, you beautiful, brilliant, terrifying woman, why did I not recruit you into my crew by any means necessary?”

The snail laughed and puffed another exhale. _“Because I had my own independent operation and wasn't interested? And also because I don't look half as good in drag as you manly men do? Without my sparkling intelligence, my youthful feminine beauty is all I have, you know.”_

“Bullshit,” Rouge declared immediately, because on top of both those things, Shakky had a kick like a mule who could level mountains in high heels. “But... thank you, Shakuyaku, I am... indebted to you for this.”

Rouge could hear Liz and Grieffe shift behind her, because to declare owing a debt to someone was not exactly a safe or sensible thing to do for a pirate, even to a friend and ally. But Rouge knew that Shakky would only call it in if she or Rayleigh were in trouble they couldn't handle, and if that were the case, pigs would be flying because Shakky and Rayleigh were both _monsters,_ and Rouge would gladly come to their aid anyway.

“ _Consider us equal with the expression your return is going to put on Ray-san's face,”_ the snail replied with a small chuckle. _“Things have been... a little dull without you and Roger stirring things up, Jack. Working out how you got away with your thefts used to be the highlight of my day.”_

“Ah, I'll have to give you a few challenges again, then,” Rouge said. “Thank you, Shakuyaku. We'll be in touch once we reach Dawn Island.”

“ _Please do,”_ the snail said, _“and when you find him... say hello to your treasure from his Uncle Ray-san and Aunt Shakky, would you, Jack? We're sorry we can't be there for him.”_

Rouge was stunned silent for a moment, and she felt tears welling in the corners of her eyes.

“It would be my absolute pleasure to,” she replied honestly.

 

**{4}**

 

Now that Rouge had a lead on where to begin her search, she started her campaign to leave immediately. Rina and Rita fell quickly to Rouge's unstoppable stubbornness, Doctor Bell lasted an impressive two hours of arguing with Rouge when she came for a check-up, and Riika was throwing her hands up in defeat by suppertime that same day. With all her other opponents vanquished, that evening in the sitting room, Rouge turned to Rhysa, who had been suspiciously silent thus far.

(Liz and Grieffe had both been thoroughly trained into tired obedience years ago, and would have only put up a fight if they thought themselves incapable of taking care of their captain. Which they weren't. Rouge had had some nasty scrapes over the years and, out of corresponding necessity, Liz made a fearsome nurse for a ferocious swordswoman.)

“What? You think I'm going to argue for you to stay and eat us out of house and home more than you already have?” Rhysa demanded, cackling slightly at her own joke. “Nah, you've got a will I'm not putting my old bones up against, you pretty twit. Go off and find your brat.”

“Mom!” Riika objected desperately, clearly having hoped that her mother would be able to stop Rouge from setting out to Dawn Island. A hope that was rather ridiculous, in Rouge's opinion, since an actual god hadn't been able to stop her, so a wrinkly old frog had next to no chance whatsoever.

Rhysa ignored her daughter. “Go, get out of my house as the most difficult patient I've ever had, a title I know you'll wear with stupid pride,” she said. “Since you'd fall over your own feet right now, take the wheelchair as a parting gift. It's ugly, it squeaks, and I don't want it.”

Rouge opened her mouth to thank the old woman, but Rhysa continued with, “Oh, and take those twin grand-brats of mine too,” so Rouge's thanks came out more like, “...Pardon me?”

At their study table, Rina's medical text slipped out of her hands with a soft thump, surprising Rita into jumping to her feet.

“WHAT?” Rita shrieked.

“Granny, what the fuck?” Rina demanded.

Riika dropped her face into her hands. “Mom, you can't just give away grandchildren.”

Rhysa ignored daughter _and_ her granddaughters. “Don't worry about it,” she told Rouge. “Take them, I have grandchildren to spare. You need medical care and they need to get out of the damn house some more – do more like their brother.”

Rouge looked between the various Troise women awkwardly, then to Liz, who was reading poetry on the floor again and only shrugged at Rouge's desperate plea for help. “You decide the crew, captain,” she said, and Rouge scowled at her intentionally useless first mate.

Then she sighed, and looked up at Rhysa. “You do know that we're pirates, Old Frog-san?”

“Few better ways to get a taste of the world,” Rhysa replied carelessly, then she gave Rouge a sharp look. “You aren't in any condition to go pirating, you little twit, and you won't be 'til you're better. My grand-brats here want to be doctors, but they're scared of going out and trying for it for some silly reason. Take 'em out into the world and get them some courage and experience, keep 'em safe, let 'em look after you, and bring 'em back here when you're ready to go do silly things again.”

Rouge looked over at Rina and Rita again, and their table of medical books that they seemed to study every day. Rita had dropped back into her seat, silently staring at her hands, and Rina had a surprised _want_ in her expression before she looked away and focused on the wall.

“They could be put in danger for even associating with us,” Rouge warned Rhysa seriously.

Rhysa just cackled. “And you can't hide their identities, you pretty twit? Please!”

Rouge sighed, because she could think of over a dozen different ways to dress Rina and Rita up so that they wouldn't be recognized just off the top of her head. And Rhysa was right, Rouge was hardly going to revive her work and adventures as Redblack Jack before she was fully capable of taking on the powerful hunters that the Marines would sent after her. She probably wouldn't publicly bring herself back until she was sure that her baby could fully handle himself, which likely wouldn't be for years.

Rouge looked over at Rina and Rita again. She'd grown fairly fond of the young women during her time here, due to their likable personalities and admirable capabilities, but they were hardly the type of people Rouge would have invited into her crew without prompting. They seemed like they could keep a secret, but life on the sea, especially with the Blackjack Pirates, required a backbone of steel. The Troise twins were hardly fighters, and there was no guarantee that there was that necessary stubbornness and determination under their apparent softness.

Although... if they were anything like their old frog of a grandmother...

“What do you say?” Rouge asked the two women. “I won't take unwilling crewmembers.”

Rina and Rita exchanged a look between them.

“And you should know,” Rouge added before either could answer, because it was necessary, “that I have a number of dangerous secrets that you will learn if you travel with me. If you betray me, even after you have left my crew far behind you, I will not hesitate to kill you.”

The silence in the room at that statement was damning. Riika had gone pale, and was looking at her daughters fearfully, while Rina and Rita had gone wide-eyed and still. Rhysa's wrinkly grin had become a grim expression as she studied her granddaughters, and Liz had looked away from her book to study the tension in the room before glancing questioningly at Rouge.

“I think it is time for my evening exercises now,” Rouge informed her first mate.

Liz glanced at the clock, ticking away awkwardly in the silence, and hefted herself to her feet. “Yeah, 'bout time,” she agreed, dropping her book in Rouge's lap and taking the handles of Rouge's chair to wheel them down to the guest room the Troise family has given them.

Before they left the room, Rouge gave the twins one last look. “We're leaving tomorrow,” she said, “on the tide. You have until then to think about it.”

 

**{4}**

 

Liz wandered through the darkened house, having put an exhausted Rouge to bed a few minutes ago, and walked out the front door to the hill outside the Troise home. She and Kanone had both taken to standing there for some peace time when they had the chance. The view was gorgeous at any hour of the day – especially now, with the moon and stars over the waves – and the sea breeze that was always blowing helped clear Liz's head.

She used to take these calm moments with a cigarette years ago, but she'd quickly quit after Kanone had joined the crew and hadn't taken it up again since. Smoking was a habit that she'd taken up after Rouge had rescued her, mostly just because she could, and after the crew had disbanded, the habit had reminded her too much of those perfect days at sea when it had just been her and her captain sailing together through the Blues. With Rouge dead, those happy memories had been too painful to start again.

Rouge was back now.

It felt like a hole had been filled in Liz's heart. She'd been so damn lost without her captain and now it seemed she'd found herself again alongside Rouge. It was such a stupid and cliché sentiment, but for all the plays and poetry that Liz read and adored, she couldn't find more suitable words. The world just hadn't been right without Rouge, and Liz never wanted to live in that horrible place ever again.

Liz stayed there on the hill for a long while, more grateful than she could ever explain, and simply enjoyed the world made right again.

After awhile, Liz sensed someone approaching her from behind. It was one of those Troise twins that the old woman was trying to dump on them, something that Liz had no objection to as long as Rouge didn't, because they could use some people with an actual interest in medicine beyond keeping a moron captain alive and Liz had kind of missed having adorable young swabbies to boss around on the ship. She liked kids and that was one of the best parts of being the first mate.

The one coming up behind her was... the one with the cute little crush on the hot doctor... what was her name? Rina? Liz was pretty sure that Rita was the one with the adorable, silly romance books that sounded like they were slightly based on Liz's Blackjack Pirates identity, so that made this one Rina.

“What's up, Troise?” Liz asked without turning around.

Rina was quiet for a long time, but Liz had exactly nothing better to do, so she just waited until the girl finally spoke up and blurted out, “Is it worth it?”

Liz thought about it and then burst out laughing, the hollow kind that Rouge hated, which took a while to stop.

“Ah, sorry, kid. It's just... I am probably the absolute fucking worst person for anyone to ask that to,” Liz said, looking out over the Blues with a smile, because she really was.

After another few moments, when Rina didn't go away and Liz came to the realization that the only other person the twins could ask was _Kanone,_ who was right behind Liz on the list of worst people to ask and far less sociable, Liz sighed.

“Yeah. Yeah, it's worth it,” she said.

Because it really was.

 

**{4}**

 

Rouge huffed impatiently. “I don't understand why I have to wear a blindfold,” she complained as Liz rolled her down the streets of Baterilla Town towards the docks. After they had said their final goodbyes at the Troise house, Liz had tied a scarf around her eyes and carried her, wheelchair and all, down the hill with a firm command not to remove it.

“Because I fucking said so,” Liz answered, which was the only answer Rouge had been getting for the past fifteen minutes. “Now shut up and I can finally take it off.”

Rouge shut up and Liz fumbled at the back of her head for a few moments, then removed the scarf. It took a few moments for Rouge to adjust to the dawn light after so long being blindfolded, but she eventually managed to blink away any fuzziness and take a good look at the ship that Liz and Grieffe had sailed to Baterilla.

The sails had obviously been replaced, and there were a few changes to the rigging, and the cannons were enormously different, but otherwise she looked exactly the same as Rouge had last seen her. In fact, she looked even better, because the new sails were a crisp white and the large, sleek, golden ship looked like every inch of her had been scrubbed to the point where she was practically shining. The ship seemed to gleam, like she was preening proudly, in the morning light.

“House Royale,” Rouge whispered, feeling her eyes tear up again.

Liz stepped up next to her, grinning widely. “Yeah, looks good, doesn't she?” she asked, putting her hands on her hips as she looked it over. “I couldn't bear to keep her after you gave her to me, so I gave her to Kanone since she'd basically fucking built the lady. Turns out the cannon-obsessed snowflake's been keeping our sexy lady in tip-top shape ever since, even making a few improvements.”

“A fact that you were grateful for when you needed transport to reach our captain,” a familiar voice announced, and Rouge looked up to see Grieffe swing down onto the ship railing from the mast, landing almost soundlessly and balancing there with ease.

Rouge's gunmaster smiled down at them both in an expression that Rouge easily translated as Grieffe's version of beaming proudly. Looking up at her friend, Rouge was stuck by a thousand memories of Whitecross Simon swinging through the rigging like he had wings, pulling levers and flicking switches to activate dozens of tricks and to fire bombardments on their enemies like a miraculous, terrifying, one-man crew. Of course Liz had given the ship to Grieffe, and of course Grieffe had kept her.

“She looks _beautiful,_ Grieffe,” Rouge said.

Grieffe's smile became minutely wider. “Oh, she is far more than that, Rouge-san. Baiebleu-san, bring the captain aboard so she can get a better view than her one down there,” she ordered, with a mischievous look to her eye. “Everyone knows that the best view on one's ship is at the helm, after all.”

“ _First mate,_ Kanone,” Liz reminded Grieffe, with far less bite than normal, before looking back down at Rouge with a massive grin. “But I can't argue with the trueness of that. C'mon, captain.” And with that, Liz picked up Rouge's wheelchair again and carried her effortlessly up onto the deck of the House Royale, then up the stairs to the ship's wheel.

Once in front of the wheel, practically vibrating with excitement, Rouge realized, “Liz, I can't see over the wheel.”

Liz snorted, then said, “Shut up, Kanone,” to the woman who had swung down next to her.

“I said absolutely nothing, Baiebleu-san,” Grieffe insisted blandly.

Liz moved in front of Rouge and lifted her out of the wheelchair with ease, hefting her up in a bridal style hold and stepping up to the wheel of the ship. Rouge carefully took hold of the wheel with trembling hands, then stared over the gleaming deck with breathless joy, feeling wetness over her cheeks that she couldn't give less of a damn about.

Rouge was not capable of standing tall at a ship's wheel, not yet, and her bellowing wasn't quite up to par yet, but this was better than she ever could have imagined. There was a beautiful sunrise on the horizon, Rouge had her first mate at her back and her gunmaster at her side, and she was going to sail off into this new wonderful day on her beloved ship to find her son. It was _perfect._

Rouge let go of the wheel and shifted in Liz's arms to hug her first mate tightly, which Liz tolerated with a heavy sigh at Rouge soaking her with tears again, and then shifted again to grab Grieffe and pull her gunmaster down into an awkward embrace that didn't exactly work. Liz had to shift her stance to keep from falling over, grumbling under her breath, and Grieffe pulled away as soon as possible, adjusting her eyepatch with obvious embarrassment.

“Thank you,” Rouge told them, beaming. “Both of you, thank you.”

Liz snorted. “Yeah, save it, 'cause we're not done with the surprises yet,” she said, and walked over to the side of the ship. “Got some new recruits, captain; they looked a little hopeless to me, but we can beat that shit out of 'em.”

Rouge peered over the side of the ship and spotted two figures standing on the docks with a pile of heavy-looking suitcases between them that were without a doubt filled with books. Spotting Rouge at the ship's railing, one of the two young women cupped her hands over her mouths.

“Permission to come aboard, captain?” Rina shouted.

Rouge grinned and shouted back, “Permission granted, doctors!”

“We're not doctors yet!” Rita corrected.

Rouge just kept smiling. “That's the spirit,” she said to Liz, watching the young women collect one of their suitcases each and very slowly move to board. “You're probably going to need to help them with those.”

“We do have a tide to catch,” Liz agreed, stepping back to return Rouge to her wheelchair, then jumping over the side of the ship to help Rina and Rita on the docks.

“And we are not missing it,” Grieffe said, smiling down at her captain. “We have set our course for utmost speed, Rouge-san, from South Blue to East. We will travel straight through the Grand Line, directly on the Dawn Island.”

Rouge clapped her hands together in excitement. “Why, Grieffe, that sounds positively dangerous!”

“Don't fucking remind me!” Liz shouted unhappily from where she was carrying all of the Troise twins' luggage at once, much to Rina and Rita's wide-eyed, open-mouthed surprise.

Grieffe just scoffed at the first mate, then looked down at Rouge. “You may have gone soft in your ten years of vacation, Rouge-san,” she said teasingly. “But Baiebleu-san and I have not let our skills deteriorate in the slightest. Should anyone try to stop us or move us off our course, be they Sea Kings, marines, or pirates, they will be shortly reminded of the severe consequences of making foes of the Blackjack Pirates.”

Rouge couldn't help but laugh at the muted eagerness in her serious friend, then reminded her gunmaster, “Grieffe, we're trying to keep our return quiet.”

In the sunlight, Grieffe's eye shone with a familiar blood-thirst. “Rouge-san,” she said chidingly, her smile as sharp as one of Liz's swords. “Whoever said they will be left alive to remind anyone else?”

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I enjoyed expanding into canon One Piece characters, although my canon memory is still pretty wobbly.  
> If I've hinted at stuff but not gone into it, it means that I'm saving it for later. Like a) what happened when Liz and Grieffe first met and b) why Rouge forgetting Shanks is an absolutely hilarious idea. Poor Shanks will definitely eventually be making an appearance.


	5. To the South Blue Calm Belt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Blackjack Pirates return to the Blues and sail towards the Calm Belt. Questions rise.

 

“You may be Blackjack Pirates now, but you still gotta fucking prove that you can really fucking _be_ Blackjack Pirates,” Liz said, standing with her hands on her hips like a general overseeing her army. “If you wanna be a Blackjack Pirate then there's a whole fucking lot of shit that you'll need to know and that I'm going to cram into your tiny heads if it's the last thing I do.”

“If only,” Grieffe muttered off to the side, standing by Rouge's chair next to the railing.

“Shut the fuck up, Kanone,” Liz said without missing a beat. “Now, for the foreseeable future I will be your sensei and first mate; every piece of shit I tell you, you remember; every piece of shit I order, you will do. If you're going to sail these seas with us, you have to be strong and fucking listen so I can make that happen – which I will, whether you fucking like it or not.”

Liz adjusted her sunglasses here, pausing, without a doubt for intentional dramatic effect. “Before.... we told you, 'Welcome to the crew',” she said, eyes glinting with previously-unseen evilness. “Now... I'm here to correct that... 'Welcome to _Hell'.”_

On the deck of the House Royale, there was a very tense silence for a long while, then the shadow of pure evil on Liz's face disappeared and she was back to her usual relaxed self.

“Any questions?” she said.

Rina and Rita exchanged a very nervous look, then Rina leaned over to look at Captain Rouge and Gunmaster Grieffe sitting and standing on the sidelines of this. Grieffe seemed to be watching for not other reason than because she had nothing better to do than watch the first mate torture them, including _steering the ship._

(“We're not in the Grand Line yet,” Grieffe had said blandly when Rina had asked, fiddling deftly with one of the many, _many_ cannons aboard the House Royale. “I have mechanisms and devices more than capable of handling the waters of South Blue for short periods of time.”

Then she'd turned around to look at Rina with the least empathetic expression Rina had ever seen and said in the most monotone, least comforting voice Rina had ever heard, “Do not worry about it.”

That had just made Rina worry more, which she was pretty sure Grieffe, who she was starting to suspect was at least a little bit sadistic too, knew. All of the members of the Blackjacks seemed to be, honestly, including Rouge, which had been the scariest revelation by far.)

Rouge, on the other hand, wasn't actually watching. She was busy reading a worldwide newspaper that some freaky bird had delivered, occasionally asking a question of or making a comment to Grieffe. Rina was pretty sure the captain was here because Rouge simply enjoyed company and the ship deck, and also because Liz had some _thing_ about letting the wheelchair-bound woman out of her sight for more than five seconds now that they were on the ocean, like she was afraid Rouge would tumble overboard into the water the second her back was turned.

Rouge was probably also here out of some misguided gesture of moral support, but Rina would have traded that for actual rescue from Liz in a heartbeat.

“Is it too late to go back to Baterilla?” Rina asked, depressing herself a little with the knowing hopelessness in her own tone.

Next to her, Rita added, “Yes! We can, um... swim? Yes, swim... if we have to.”

Rouge looked up from her news with a sunny, sympathetic smile that meant she had no intention of sparing them. “Hmm? Oh, I'm afraid it's a bit late for that,” she said apologetically. “Surviving the Four Blues is hard enough, and we're going to be going through the Grand Line, so you're going to need to be prepared for that. Getting your sealegs was only the first step.”

Rita went a bit green at the reminder of their first few days at sea, and Rina felt how her twin looked. They'd both spent far too long hanging over the railing of the ship and going absolutely everywhere with a bucket, and the horror had only recently subsided.

Which, in Blackjack Pirate world, clearly meant it was time to up the misery.

“This ship is fucking fast,” Liz told them both seriously, “so that means I have a fuckton to teach you in a shit amount of time. We've got to at least get the damn basics down before we sail into the Grand Line. Now... what do the both you actually fucking _know_ about the Blackjack Pirates?”

Rina exchanged another look with her twin, then they looked back at Liz.

“They sound... uh... vaguely familiar?” Rita offered.

Liz lifted up her sunglasses to pinch the bridge of her nose. “Alright, then, from scratch,” she said. “This crew was started by Rouge when she was sixteen, called the Red Pirates, quickly expanding to me, and then Grieffe. We weren't using our real names then either, but we weren't disguising ourselves, so, even small-time and without even the shittiest of bounties, it only took awhile before Rouge was recognized by someone she'd robbed.

“After a string of similar incidents, and... a job gone hilariously fucking wrong, we decided to create new identities that would take all the blame and let us go about from place to place safely. This was when the Red Pirates became the Blackjack Pirates, a crew of tough, badass, pillaging, instantly recognizable, _male_ pirates.

“I,” Liz said, placing a hand on her chest and grinning in memory, “became a swordsman and eloquent flirt named Bluebeard John. Yes, I had a fucking beard, yes, it was blue, and yes, I looked damn good in it.” She hooked a thumb over towards Grieffe. “The snowflake there became a psychopathic master of mass destruction named Whitecross Simon; she's got her costume around here somewhere and it's freaky as fucking hell.”

“I would argue that it is your disguise that is far more unnerving,” Grieffe said.

“Wrong and not up for fucking debate, Kanone. Anyway, last but not at all least, Rouge became a colorful thief named Redblack Jack, later to be known as the 'World's Greatest Thief'.” Liz took a moment here to stare off into cherished memory. “Before this whole 'Great Pirate Era' shit started, we were one of the most dangerous and most feared crews on all the Blues, allied with other big-name crews like the Spider Pirates... and the Roger Pirates.”

Rina felt her heart skip a few beats at that, and once again felt like she might be hallucinating... or dreaming. Because while the Blackjack Pirates sounded vaguely familiar and the Spider Pirates were a complete unknown, Rina would have had to have been living under a rock at the bottom of the ocean not to know about the Pirate King's crew.

_(“You do know that we're pirates, Old Frog-san?”)_

Rina hadn't really understood the largeness of what they'd become a part of until right now.

“Is it really too late to swim back to Baterilla?” she asked weakly.

Liz's eyes narrowed behind her sunglasses, and Rina was in far too much shock to be feeling the terror that she knew she should be feeling as the first mate said, “ _Yes._ It's too fucking late; you're Blackjack Pirates now and it's your own damn faults. So you're going to learn how to work a ship, because you can't be pirates without knowing how to fucking sail, even if prissy Kanone probably won't let you touch shit for at least a couple months.”

“Baiebleu-san, that is untrue. But do you have _any idea_ in that minuscule, berry-sized brain of how delicate some of my mechanisms are? I cannot just let random, uneducated-”

“You just proved my point, Kanone,” Liz interrupted, not at all fazed, then continued, “And you're going to learn your ways around simple disguises, acting, and knives, because you can't be _Blackjack Pirates_ without at least knowing how to walk like a cocky son of a bitch, which we're going to put off for the moment considering we're not going to make public appearances, and how to properly stab a man.”

“St-st-stab a man?” Rita echoed, horrified.

“...Properly?” Rina repeated, still stunned and reluctantly intrigued.

Apparently Rouge had reached the end of an article, because while turning to the next page of her newspaper, she actually looked up in time to say. “Self-defense is essential to a woman making her way in this dangerous world.” Then something on the new page caught her eye and she paid it very close attention, saying, “Has Marco-kun really not changed his hair in twelve years?”

In answer to Rina's question, Grieffe said, “Efficiency and accuracy are vital parts of any successful attack. There is a proper way to do everything.” Then she leaned down and squinted at the newspaper. “Edward-san's son? Apparently and unfortunately not.”

“Oh dear,” Rouge said sadly, with the exact same amount of sympathy she'd given to the imminent death of Rina and Rita at the hands of Liz the First Mate From Hell. Maybe more, actually.

“Perhaps some individuals simply wish to have the appearance of a gangly, blond pineapple,” Grieffe suggested, putting a hand on her captain's shoulder in comfort. “It is not so bad. Look at Baiebleu-san, she has not let her unfortunate appearance have any impact on her undeserved happiness.”

Liz sighed. “Kanone, do you really have nothing better to do than be a fucking nuisance?”

“There is no need to be hypocritical about this, Baiebleu-san.”

“At this point, I guess nothing else would really suit him. He seems to make it work,” Rouge remarked with cheerful optimism, looking briefly up to remind her first mate, “Liz, you should really get the girls started on the ropes before the wind really picks up, unless you'd prefer to get started on the stabbing thing first.”

“Can we, um, maybe just skip the 'stabbing thing;?” Rita asked hopefully. “I don't think I'd be very good at it, anyway. I don't think I have the... uh... temperament.”

“It's actually almost frighteningly easy, to be fucking honest,” Liz replied with a shrug, drawing the twins' attention back to her. “Besides, you both want to be doctors, right? Take that knowledge, and just reverse your thinking 'bout where the blood should be. Easy change of mindset.”

There was another very tense silence for a long while, interrupted only by Rouge turning the page again.

“Baiebleu-san, you are an inspiration to us all,” Grieffe said finally.

“Bite me, snowflake.”

 

**{5}**

 

Rouge had missed picnicking on House Royale's deck. There was arguably no better part of being a pirate than feasting with your crew on a sea under the stars. On the quiet nights on her solitary ship, on the run from near fleets of marines, Rouge had brought up the sweet memories of food, song, laughter, and dancing until the dawn to feel just a little bit less lonely.

It wasn't nearly so loud or joyous now, given that their crew consisted of about five people at the moment, but it was still nice. It was a more bittersweet kind of celebration, but Rouge thought the more peaceful happiness was the the one she needed now. It brought back even older, even sweeter memories of when it had just been her, her first mate, and her gunmaster, none of them even eighteen, none of them with families worth mentioning, sailing the Blues and dreaming big dreams.

“They're sweet when they've collapsed from exhaustion,” Rouge commented, leaning against her first mate, looking over the two young women who'd fallen asleep within fifteen minutes of sitting down. She tilted her head back to look up at Liz. “Working them hard, number two?”

Liz grinned, only slightly maniacally. “Aye, aye, captain.”

“They are getting _fingerprints_ on my devices,” Grieffe said darkly, taking a sip of sake that managed to be both delicate and deeply furious. “ _Fingerprints,_ ” she repeated, and then she looked at the bottle and chugged it, posture perfect and pinky raised.

Rouge and Liz watched her with amusement.

“Well, Kanone, if you hadn't rigged the entire fucking ship to be your clockwork toy...”

“Close your foul, sweat-causing mouth, Baiebleu-san,” Grieffe said coldly, pointing a finger like it was one of her pistols and she was about to commit cold-blooded murder. “I do not care what position you believe you hold on this ship, if blood is spilled, you _will_ be scrubbing the deck yourself.”

Liz just looked bemused, raising her sake-holding hand up in a mockery of surrender. “As you wish, snowflake. I'll even kiss their damn boo-boos and keep them away from your precious fucking cannons. But, to be honest, I doubt the girls will end up stabbing each other. They're quick learners, better than I thought they'd be. Also, they're way too fucking terrified of accidentally stabbing each other.”

Rouge laughed. “They'll get better once they have some confidence in their abilities,” she said. “On top of their medical skills, Ta-chan actually knows an impressive amount of trivia on sailing and life on the Blues, and I'm so glad that Na-chan can cook. I can't believe that neither of you learned in over a decade.”

Grieffe shifted, adjusting her eyepatch. “It did not seem relevant.”

“Yeah, never really became necessary,” Liz agreed casually. “Hey, speaking of cooks, I know that we've been avoiding the issue... but what are we going to do about the rest of the crew? I think I know where most of our big crewmembers are, but I'd have to make a few calls.”

“This is rather personal, Baiebleu-san,” Grieffe said with a scowl, then softened. “But I can make the calls to find our crewmembers as well as our contacts if you wish, Rouge-san.” She paused, then scowled at Liz again, even deeper than before. “Baiebleu-san, you had _no idea_ that we were residing on the same island and yet you know where everyone else is?”

“No! Snowflake, fuck no!” Liz protested. “I just _think_ I know where _most_ of our big crewmembers are. I may not have known where you were, but I know that Della is on Water Seven somewhere, and you can't tell me that your second wouldn't have been capable of tracking your big ass down.”

Rouge looked over at Grieffe, raising her eyebrows. Under the questioning stares of her friends, Grieffe adjusted her eyepatch again and said, “Della-san and I may have kept in contact,” and set her sake bottle aside to reach for another one.

“Thank you for the offer,” Rouge said to them both, “but Grieffe is right that this is very personal to me. I'll think about it, but I don't want to involve the rest of the crew, at least not until things are settled and I'm in a better place. But I am curious to know where everyone else is now; tell me, what have they been up to?”

Liz and Grieffe exchanged a brief look, then Grieffe began, “Della-san works in material supply for shipwrights now; she has a company, one that would remain profitable even if she decided not to involve herself in her black market any longer.” Grieffe paused for a moment. “We speak at least once a year. She gives me discounts on my orders.”

“Oh, that's nice,” Rouge said happily. “Liz, what about your second? Where's Opie now?”

Liz shrugged. “Not entirely sure, really. She went traveling, doing some freelance gigs. Last I heard, she was planning on trying to write a fucking book. I know where her mom's living, though, and Opie's probably not too far way from home.”

Rouge continued to ask questions about her crew, eager to know what new dreams her friends had found for themselves. Liz and Grieffe's knowledge was a bit scattered and they hadn't stayed in regular contract with anyone, save for Grieffe and Della, but they were able to piece together some basic facts about the more senior members of the Blackjack Pirates. As they described each one, Rouge mentally placed each crewmate where they'd be during a party.

Hayes Della, for example, would never be found far from her Kanone-sempai, and probably would have been bustling around filling cups and plates for everyone. And Opallo 'Opie' Jacquotte definitely would have been providing the the music, telling stories, and leading people in drunken song. Rouge couldn't really picture them properly, given how very long it had been, but she could still remember their smiles and laughter like it was yesterday.

Shakky had mentioned that one of Rouge's crewmembers may be settled on Dawn Island, although she hadn't said which one. It definitely wouldn't be Della, and probably not Opie either, and Rouge just couldn't picture most of her 'big' crewmembers there either. But Shakky wouldn't have known or paid any attention if it weren't someone important.

Rouge wondered who it would be.

 

**{5}**

 

Rouge-san, are you certain you wish to attempt this now? You do not have to force yourself beyond your limits like this.”

Rouge huffed. “Grieffe, both Na-chan and Ta-chan gave the okay. This was going to happen eventually so just _back off_ and let me _walk._ I'm fine. I have a cane. Look at my nice and sturdy cane! I swear, you're just as bad as Liz is.”

From where she was watching Rina and Rita race each other to the crow's nest, also perfectly positioned to watch Rouge limp around the deck, Liz called, “I object to that! I am by fucking far the worst! It means I love you most. Also, you have ten more minutes before I tie you to the shitty chair for the rest of the day.”

Rouge just huffed, both touched and annoyed by Liz's smothering concern, and unwilling to admit that spending most of the morning stumbling over every bit of her ship that she could physically reach – twice – had left her more than a little bit tired. She'd probably be spending her lunchtime asleep, and Liz and Grieffe would be spending it recovering from several almost heart-attacks, but it was worth it. It felt so nice to be able to see over things and go up and down stairs again, albeit with much, much effort for the latter.

Although she knew Liz and Grieffe dreaded the day, Rouge couldn't wait until she was clambering up and down the ropes again like the twins were doing now. Unfortunately, she'd just have to settle for shakily stumbling over the deck with Grieffe trying to pretend that she wasn't hovering and Liz somehow managing to hover from a distance.

After another ten minutes, with her first mate and gunmaster getting increasingly antsy, Rouge gave in and let Grieffe return her to her chair with only a tired huff. Then an amused snort as Grieffe practically snatched the cane away, like she was confiscating a deadly weapon, and tossed the cane to Liz, who was shouting at Rina and Rita to hurry their asses down already, caught it without looking, and immediately tucked it alongside her swords.

“Kanone, watch the girls and make sure they don't fall and break their backs or some shit,” Liz ordered, walking over to the two of them and thumbing towards the twins over her shoulder. “We don't have other doctors to fix 'em and I wanna have a word with the captain.”

Grieffe's eye twitched, but she walked over the mast anyway, nose in the air and not even looking at Liz as she passed her. Rouge's first mate just snorted at the gunmaster and picked up Rouge and her chair with ease, then carried her up the stairs to the ship's helm. Rouge did her part of the job by sitting still and looking pretty, wondering what Liz wanted; her friend had seemed bothered by something ever since Grieffe had announced early this morning that they were approaching the South Blue Calm Belt, and that they would reach it by mid-afternoon.

“We're going to be the Belt soon,” Liz said after she'd placed Rouge down and grabbed a light hold of the wheel as Grieffe device moved it back and forth, keeping them on course. “Rina didn't know what it was at first, but Rita explained it, and they psyched each other the fuck out. So I've been having them work it off; nothing calms a swabbie down like not being able to feel their arms.”

Rouge huffed. “They're doctors-in-training, Liz, not swabbies.”

“Whatever, same thing.”

Rouge laughed. “Or both, I supposed,” she offered, before she allowed her face to become serious and concerned. “Liz, what's been worrying you?”

“It's not so much a worry as it's a sudden realization,” Liz said with a shrug that didn't manage to hide the tension in her broad shoulders. “Kanone was complaining about... fucking excuse me, _mentioning_ the difficulties in maintaining a certain necessary defense while I explained Seastone coating the girls, and it got me thinking about our defenses that avoid violence.”

“Ah, your least favorite kind,” Rouge said, bemused, and also uncertain as to where Liz was going with this.

Liz snorted. “Not true,” she protested jokingly. “I like the ones that involve me on a Den Den Mushi, chatting up ladies and tricking shit out of marines. But, seriously, Rouge, the thing I gotta know is... do all those other defenses... still work?”

Rouge blinked. “What?”

“Your fucking Devil Fruit, Rouge; do you still have it?”

Rouge blinked again, then Liz's worrying started to place itself more neatly in her head. “What? Oooh. Yes, yes, I do. Of course I do. Liz, why would you think I didn't?”

“Oh, I don't fucking know... because you _died,_ maybe?” Liz answered, pinching the bridge of her nose under her sunglasses. “I only just realized this morning that your shitty Devil Fruit could have been reborn considering you're technically _undead!”_

“Don't go talking badly about my fruit,” Rouge warned, then considered the idea. “I never thought about that. It must be the wonders of divine intervention, because I certainly haven't lost my abilities. I can still pull Yuda and Ghost Ship tricks, and of course the Gambling Scarlett, although I'm not sure that I'm up for anything strenuous like the Black Mist or the Invisible Barrage.”

Liz made a sound somewhat like a harrumph. “Mmm, that'll have to do us, then.”

“Liz!” Rouge cried, insulted to her mocking core. “Are you implying that I'm not enough? Even without my fruit, I am by far the scariest creature on the Blues.” She thrust her nose into the air, doing more than a fair impression of her gunmaster. “I can eat Sea Kings for breakfast!”

“I thought we were trying to be quiet about this, oh Pirate Queen,” Liz replied with a grin.

“Not if you go throwing technical titles that no one uses around like that,” Rouge retorted, then agreed more seriously, “But at the moment, any attention is bad attention, so I should probably avoid wrestling Sea Kings. Grieffe's Seastone coating is fine, despite the difficulties?”

“Of course, it's Kanone,” Liz replied, nodding her head towards where Grieffe was slowly talking Rina and Rita down from the ropes.

Over the past weeks, the young women had gotten good and quick at scrambling up the ropes, but they weren't quite so comfortable with coming down yet. Someone either had to talk them through every step or yell at them until they were terrified into confidence. It made for slow process.

“Snowflake doesn't ever do any job half-assed,” Liz finished, certain and even somewhat fond. “Hell, considering her fucking track record and supplier-slash-enabler, Royale is probably meticulously coated at least three times over. We should drift straight through the Belt without a problem, especially with the Yuda trick, as fun as leaving behind slashed and smoking Sea King corpses sounds.”

“If that's what you've been saying around Na-chan and Ta-chan, it's no wonder they freaked out.”

Liz snorted. “Yeah, probably,” she admitted freely.

They watched Grieffe finally manage to get the Troise twins back on the deck and then be horrified when Rina and Rita started kissing the deck in relief... again. Rouge gave it about five seconds before Grieffe started informing them of the importance of sanitation... again, and was quickly proven correct.

“Just to be sure, you're abso-fucking-lutely certain that your Devil Fruit wasn't reborn?”

Rouge looked at her first mate with amusement. 'You know no two Devil Fruits of the same kind can exist at the same time, Liz. Frequently expressed thankfulness for it. Are you really worried we'll have to face someone with my fruit?”

Liz scoffed, returning the look with amusement. “Like anyone else is enough of a sneaky cheater to match what you do,” she said, then she scowled. “I was actually hoping I wouldn't have to be worried about your dumb ass tripping into a puddle any fucking longer.”

Rouge reached out and patted her first mate on the arm. “Better still look out for those puddles, Liz.”

 

**{5}**

 

The South Blue Calm Belt turned out to be a surprisingly pleasant and entertaining experience.”

True to Blackjack Pirates form, the Royale's illegally-obtained and illegally-applied Seastone coating kept the Sea Kings below from noticing their presence. Grieffe's devices combined with Liz's considerable strength powering them kept them gliding smoothly towards the Grand Line, and Rouge's Yuda trick handled the problem of Sea Kings still being able to see their ship, making any Sea Kings that spotted them give their ship a wide berth. With Grieffe keeping her sharp eye out for marines and other pirates as well, no one and nothing came to bother them or slow their progress.

And it was nice to experience something old made new again through the eyes of someone else, as Rina and Rita gaped in surprise at the quietness and stillness of the Calm Belt, and then in awe when the calm was interrupted by Sea Kings briefly surfacing, or even leaping out of the water then splashing back down, far in the distance. The Troise twins shrieked and shouted and squealed every time they saw one of the massive monsters; Rita kept chattering somewhat hysterically about how it was just like the books had said, and Rina valiantly tried to balance being both really excited and terrified. It was entertaining to watch and heartening to see.

It was getting close to suppertime, Rina had left to get the evening meal started and no Sea Kings had been seen for half-an-hour, when Rita turned to Rouge and asked, “Rouge-san, what's the 'Yuda trick'?”

Rouge, who'd been dozing lightly for the past hour, dropping in and out of sleep while she watched the sunset, opened her eyes to look at Rita. “Hmm? Pardon, Ta-chan?” She'd caught the last two words, but hadn't been paying enough sleepy attention to have heard the rest.

“Um, Grieffe-san said that the Sea Kings are staying at a distance because of something of yours called the 'Yuda trick',” Rita elaborated. “But I don't know what 'Yuda' is.” Her voice dropped down to a completely unnecessary whisper given her company. “Is it another military secret like Seastone coating? Liz-san said that's why the technique hasn't even been published to the public.”

Rouge shook her head as she yawned. “It's – oh, excuse me – not a military secret technique; it's my secret technique. Yuda are very dangerous, very _poisonous_ sea serpents with a very distinctive scale pattern,” she explained to the younger woman. “They live in the Calm Belts and can be Sea King predators, like Bananawani, so Sea Kings avoid them. So if we give the House Royale's bottom a Yuda scale pattern, the Sea Kings instinctively avoid us too.”

“Oh,” Rita said, looking intrigued. “Oh, that's brilliant, Rouge-san. But... what happens if you encounter a real Yuda?”

“Yuda mostly don't bother each other,” Rouge answered, rubbing the remaining bits of sleep from her eyes, “and we don't feel like a real Yuda to them, anyway. Thanks to the Seastone coating, we don't feel like much of anything, really. As long as we don't try to hunt the prey they're after or bother them, they leave us alone.”

“Oh, um, alright. … And Bananawani are... what again?”

Rouge laughed lightly. “World's got a lot ore than the books do, huh, Ta-chan?” she said, expression empathetic towards the curious young woman. “Well... my memory's a little rusty, since it's been awhile since I've seen one, but... imagine a giant crocodile, about the size of a small Sea King, with a banana-shaped growth on its head.”

Rita looked skeptical for a moment, then she visibly considered something, then she gave a small shrug. Like, _that sounds ridiculous but I've seen a lot of strange, impossible things today so why not this too, I've heard about weirder stuff that's apparently true._

“That sounds, um... strange,” Rita offered.

Rouge grinned. “We'll be in the Grand Line tomorrow,” she reminded the younger woman. “You haven't seen anything yet. When we get there, just remember, if you ever feel like your life has become complete insensible insanity and you've lost hold of your ability to somewhat control the things that are happening around you... blame your old frog of a grandmother for it.”

Rita stared, then said, “Rouge-san, I've been doing that since you first handed us over to Liz-san.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Uh, okay, things to say...  
> 1) I added an Art Collection to this series, just so people can see what lines I'm thinking along for characters and etc.  
> 2) The Spider Pirates was Shakky's crew.  
> 3) I wasn't going to make Rouge a Devil Fruit User at first, but then I came up with a pretty cool one that I'm mostly sure hasn't been used before and it was just too perfect. It _was_ reborn for a short period of time, but that fruit became useless after Rouge was resurrected in the Gods' Blue, so she's not ever going to face someone with her fruit.  
>  4) This was mostly just setting things up for the future. I've been looking through the One Piece timeline and wiki trying not to contradict anything too directly, and it's kind of amazing just how much hasn't happened yet. Like, I know that's how timelines work, but still.


	6. Grand Line Ghosts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the Grand Line, under attack by pirates, Rouge and crew use the Ghost Ship trick.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wasn't sure about this chapter, since I had another scene in mind for the reveal of Rouge's Devil Fruit, but I like this too and I wanted at least some actual action in the Grand Line. Please remember that Rouge's Devil Fruit works on hand-wavey One Piece logic.

 

Grieffe stood tall in the crow's nest with the hands folded at the small of her back, and watched as the distant ship on the horizon turned towards House Royale, obviously having spotted their bright white sails. With a tired exhale at the bother of it all, Grieffe reached for her tool belt and deftly snapped out her spyglass, raising it to her eye and stretching her senses towards the approaching vessel of idiots who likely called themselves pirates.

The bloodlust on the ship was practically palpable. Grieffe frowned at the hideous eyesore of their weak captain's dress and face as he blustered about, shouting an eagerness to board and ravage into his unimpressive but responsive crew. This nameless, bloodthirsty crew was, quite frankly, insulting to everything that Grieffe held dear, from the correspondingly ugly Jolly Roger on the sails of the ill-maintained vessel, to the pathetic lumps of metal that the fools might call weaponry. It offended her deeper still that they thought they were of a class to board House Royale, even with the consideration that they did not know with whom they were dealing.

That they could still be troublesome, as the Blackjack Pirates were not yet ready to return, was perhaps the most annoying part of all and it made Grieffe sigh. She lowered her spyglass and stepped up onto the railing of the crow's nest, then took hold of a rope with her free hand and let herself fall.

Grieffe thought she could never quite describe how fulfilling (how... joyful) it was to hurdle towards the deck of the ship, to grip the rope tightly and pull herself out of freefall, and then to soar over House Royale like flying. She swooped over the domain she built herself and then, like she had done thousands of times before, landed nimbly and soundlessly next to her captain one more time.

She had missed this.

“C'mon, Rouge, you dead fucking weight, you gonna give up yet?”

On the other hand, however, thinking of things that she had not missed...

Eliza was getting sweat on the deck again, having challenged the captain to a contest of strength and endurance to aid Rouge's recovery. In their competition to see who could perform the most push-ups, it was truthfully only Rouge who was doing the sweating, but Grieffe blamed Baiebleu for the mess since the challenge had been the first mate's idea and Eliza's so-called 'handicaps' were no real hindrance with any actual chance of balancing the field.

“Great work, Rouge-san! You're doing really well!” Rita encouraged, holding her twin's shoulders to better see Rouge and stay balanced on their moving seat. “You can do it!”

Rina, meanwhile, leaned forward from her seat between Eliza's broad shoulders and demanded, “How are you even _doing_ this?”

Baiebleu Eliza turned her head to grin at the two 'handicaps' on her back. “Because I'm fucking awesome, that's how,” she answered, easily performing three push-ups for every trembling one of Rouge's. Then Eliza turned her grin on Grieffe, wicked and challenging, and asked, “You wanna get in on this hot action, Kanone?” A wink was added for good measure.

“Perhaps another time, such as never,” Grieffe answered coolly, meeting the first mate's eyes with the stare of derision that that offer deserved before turning her attention back to her captain.

Rouge was panting heavily as she lowered herself in yet another push-up, the tremble in her thin arms edging on near-violent shaking now. It would have been too much to ask, Grieffe supposed as she crouched down next to her captain, for Rouge's stubbornness and tendency towards foolishness not to have become even mightier in the face of her reduced health. While Grieffe inwardly applauded Rouge's determination in the face of certain defeat, there was still sweat on the deck now and an overexerted Rouge was not something that Grieffe enjoyed in the slightest.

“Rouge-san,” Grieffe said, lightly tapping her spyglass on the deck beneath her captain, “I believe that this has been enough for the day. It is time to cease.”

Rouge paused in the upright position, arms shaking, and looked at the spyglass. She nodded, and then sighed in blatant relief and collapsed as Grieffe took her in her arms. Grieffe frowned at coming into direct contact with sweat, but didn't complain, as she had put up with far more unpleasant things for her captain's sake – Eliza was a good example. Grieffe helped her captain back into her wheelchair and Rouge dropped into the seat with an even greater sigh of relief, leaning her head back in exhaustion and breathing heavily.

Eliza grinned in her victory and continued her work-out at an even faster pace, while the Troise twins wobbled on her back and watched Rouge with clear empathy. Rina and Rita both knew intimately what it was like to collapse from exhaustion due to the monster of strength that was Baiebleu Eliza.

As did Grieffe, for that matter, but Grieffe did not have pity or sympathy for stubborn captains foolishly pushing themselves too far.

“You did fantastic, Rouge-san!” Rita congratulated sincerely. “Your rate of recovery is amazing!”

Rina counted something on her hands and looked at Rouge in amazement. “I'm perfectly healthy and I can't even do a _fifth_ as many,” she realized, wide-eyed, staring at Rouge's wheelchair like she couldn't quite understand its existence. “You could probably climb the mast or walk around the ship with just your hands, couldn't you?”

“Don't give her any fucking ideas,” Eliza ordered immediately, saving Grieffe from having to make the reprimand. Then the first mate looked over her shoulder again with the sadistic grin that the Troise twins well-recognized by their fearful expressions. “Also, don't you worry about your push-up count; we're going to change that.”

While Rina turned an interesting shade of green, Rita looked about desperately for a change of subject to postpone their coming torture. “Ah... um... Grieffe-san!” Then her desperation shifted to an expression of realization and consideration. “...How strong are _you?”_

“Less strong than your current chair and the captain at full-strength,” Grieffe answered honestly, “but reasonably so nevertheless.” Especially considering that her specialty in combat was in artillery and other range weapons, but Grieffe had to at least be able to handle her massively destructive weaponry when Della and Eliza weren't around to do the heavy lifting.

Eliza snorted, still not ceasing her work-out. “Kanone can kick your ass to Skypeia and back if that's what you're asking.”

“It really wasn't,” Rina responded weakly, still looking slightly green.

“Grieffe was just being modest,” Rouge said with only a touch of breathlessness, and everyone turned to look at her as she lifted her head and smiled at Grieffe. “She's one of the strongest of the original Blackjacks, even if she prefers to fight from a distance. Now, Grieffe, what is it?”

“A pirate crew is approaching off the starboard side, hoping to board us,” Grieffe answered plainly.

Rouge raised her eyebrows, then said, “Well, that's silly of them.” Then she unlocked her chair's brakes, let the ship's rocking motion roll her over to the right side of the ship, spun her chair about mid-slide, stopped herself from crashing into the railing with her feet, locked the brakes, and held out her hand.

Grieffe – having wordlessly followed her excited captain, who was obviously renewed at the prospect of something potentially interesting – readily handed over her spyglass. Rouge raised the spyglass to her eye and fixed it on the distant ship that was slowly growing closer. Behind them, Rita and Rina scrambled off Eliza's back and thumped over to the railing on Rouge's left to get their first glimpse of another pirate ship and pirates in the Grand Line.

“From my estimates, they should have a crew count of approximately seventy men,” Grieffe reported at Rouge's right. “I have sensed no one of remarkable strength. Their ship has sustained large amounts of poor repairs against damage and I estimate their cannons to be of weak to moderate power – those I have seen suggested the crew is not competent in their use – it would take no more than one small shot to sink them.”

Rouge laughed as she studied the ship for herself. “I think your standards may be a little high for the average crew, Grieffe,” she said. “But, oh dear, I believe you're right. Who let these unfortunate and unprepared men out onto the sea?”

“Eh, I've seen worse,” Eliza said as she came up on Grieffe's right, stretching her arms in an annoyingly distracting fashion that made Grieffe's eye twitch. “Ever since this 'Great Pirate Era' really got going, it's seemed like everyone and their fucking dog made themselves a flag and got sailing. We gonna fight them, Rouge? I'll do it; I am fucking _down_ for setting that sail on fire.”

“How can you _see_ so much?” Rita demanded, leaning over the railing and squinting while her twin held onto her shoulders and also squinted on the other ship. “I can't see anything!”

Rouge, without looking, wordlessly offered the spyglass, which Rina snatched up in an excited squeal and almost poked her eye out in her haste to have a look. As the Troise twins shared the tool between them, Grieffe's eye twitched at the thought of all the fingerprints on it, and Eliza muttered, “We're going to change _that_ too.”

“As much as I love watching you fight, Liz,” Rouge said, “and as much as I adore watching you sink ships, Grieffe, I'd prefer not to have to end them. It's not their fault they don't know who we are, and I'd rather they not know. Instead, I think we should have them give up the chase.”

Eliza made a hideous harrumph sound. “You wanna outrun them?”

“It is well within the House Royale's capabilities to out-sail such a pathetic ship,” Grieffe said, slightly disappointed that she wouldn't get to show off her skills.

Eliza's sword skills and monster strength were easily evident to the twins even without an opponent to crush thanks to her constant practice, but Grieffe's equally impressive, if not more so, abilities were much more impressive with a target. And it really just wouldn't do for Eliza's skills to continue to be the only ones known and fawned over.

“Outrun?” Rouge asked of them, an amused and chiding expression on her face. “No, I want to have them give up their chase and sail sobbing in the other direction. It's been so long since we've played a good trick together; we should have some bonding time and show our new crewmembers the fun.”

On Rouge's other side, Rina and Rita had paused in looking at the other ship, and were staring at the back of Rouge's head with confusion and no small amount of trepidation. Eliza snorted at the expressions and grinned widely at Rouge's proposal, and Grieffe could not help but let a small smile take over her face as well.

People were always so surprised and disturbed when Rouge made these suggestions with her beaming smiles and bubbly delight and polite friendliness. Grieffe enjoyed their reactions almost as much as she enjoyed Rouge's suggestions of mischief.

Eliza rolled her shoulders in readiness, still grinning, and asked, “Ghost Ship?”

“'Ghost Ship'?” Rita asked her equally clueless sister.

Rouge clapped her hands together excitedly. “Ghost Ship!”

 

**{6}**

 

Rita felt like she should be more afraid than she actually was, but she couldn't bring herself to feel anything more than curious, excited, and maybe just a little bit daunted. Pirates, especially Grand Line pirates, were no laughing matter; even Rita's romance books said that and she knew that romance books about pirates weren't really quality source material for real life. But it was still hard to be truly afraid, because it was just so clear that she and her sister were on a ship with a far deadlier and more dangerous class of Grand Line pirates.

These original Blackjack Pirates weren't scared of _Sea Kings_ , not even a little bit. Rita's twin had once overheard Liz contemplating killing a small Sea King to have a barbecue, and Grieffe's only objections have been that it would take too long to find one of acceptable size, it would take too long to strip the corpse, the corpse would attract scavengers and other attention, and neither of them knew anything about preparing or storing or cooking Sea King meat. It had been an extraordinarily detailed and freezing put-down, but it had not contained at all the idea that fighting a Sea King was complete insanity that absolutely no one should ever attempt.

So how was Rita supposed to be afraid when in the company of these three women? If Kanone _'I could sink them in a single shot'_ Grieffe and Baiebleu _'I wanna fight literally all of them and set their sail on fire'_ Eliza weren't enough, and they by no means were any such thing, then Portgas D. _'Let's have a fun bonding experience!'_ Rouge was more than enough to really just make Rita curious and even a tiny bit concerned for the pirates that were coming over, probably with the intent of killing them.

As soon as Rouge had said 'Ghost Ship', Liz and Grieffe had immediately stepped away and gone down the hatch into House Royale's galley. Liz was wearing the sadistic grin that usually meant the first mate was going to make Rita turn her own bones to jelly, and Grieffe, who tended to be rather... blank, was smiling so genuinely that Rita almost expected it to reach fake from the other side.

Then Rouge turned towards Rita and her sister.

Rita almost took a wary step back from that beaming smile, but Rina's unintentional death grip on her shoulder was keeping her from moving. Or running. Or jumping off the side of the ship for her own self-preservation, because Rita had the same feeling right now that she always got just before an incident where she thought she might die of secondhand embarrassment.

“We're going to pull a trick that we like to call 'Ghost Ship'!” Rouge announced. “It's one of the Blackjack Pirates' oldest and most favorite techniques for avoiding identification and attention, which may seem a little strange because of how attention-grabbing it is, but really it's just great!” Then her beaming smile dropped away and her tone turned serious. “Now, Na-chan, Ta-chan, I want the two of you to stay calm, watch very closely, and pay attention to exactly what happens. Can you do that for me?”

“Yes, Rouge-san,” Rita's sister answered, while Rita just nodded with her twin's response.

The beaming smile reappeared and Rouge clapped her hands together again. “Great!” she exclaimed, reaching out to take Rita and Rina's hands in her own, to say teasingly, “Remember: your eyes tell lies.”

Then Rouge rolled a little ways away and shouted over her shoulder to the galley in a commanding tone that the Troise twins had not heard before, “FOG!”

“FOG!” came Liz's replying shout from inside House Royale's galley, and then there was a loud click, followed by a series of similar clicks, and a low hissing noise started.

Leaning over the ship's railing to see if anything had happened and not seeing anything, Rita raised the spyglass again to see if she had a better view of the other crew now, and noticed something strange about the spyglass... and her hand... and her arm. They all were transparent; wide-eyed, following her arms to the rest of her, Rita realized that _all_ of her had become... ghost-like.

She held her hand in front of her and stared at it. Squinting, Rita could see every muscle, every bone, every vein and artery, exactly as her medical books depicted them; as she moved her fingers, they moved too. And through all of it, Rita could see the sky through her hand and the sea through her arm and the deck through her dress.

Rita looked at Rina, who seemed equally shocked, and saw that her twin was suffering from the same sudden affliction. If Rita looked carefully, she could see her twin's ribs and the heart beating inside them, and all that lay beneath her twin's face. They had both become living, tinted windows, and once they were done gaping, they exchanged a bewildered stare.

“What the _fuck_?” Rina said softly.

“I have no idea,” Rita answered on reflex and, because she couldn't seem to help herself, reached out to touch her twin's arm. She half-expected for her hands to go through Rina, but instead, Rina was perfectly solid and completely normal to the touch. Hardly ghost-like there. They were both solid, just... see-through.

They both looked towards Rouge, who was sitting in her wheelchair nearby, looking out towards the other ship with a smile that was far more predatory than beaming. Like them, the captain was also transparent, but she didn't seem concerned about it, and tapped a rhythm on the railing with her ghostly fingers until Liz and Grieffe returned with their arms full of cannonballs.

(Well, Liz had her arms full with at least seven, all about the size of a large grapefruit. Grieffe was only holding one and seemed unhappy about it.)

In front of Rita's very eyes, the first mate and the gunmaster walked across the deck and lost their color as they went. Even Liz's vibrant purple hair and Grieffe's black clothing washed out in transparency, as did all their muscles and bones. So did the cannonballs in their arms, revealing an unexpected amount of mechanics inside that were without doubt Grieffe's doing, which Rouge eyed with bemused curiosity and a questioning tilt of the head as her crewmates went by.

“Kanone thought that we could fire the screamers from the deck so the girls could see everything that's happening,” Liz answered, with a grin that was twice as wide and thrice as terrifying with her skull simultaneously visible and transparent. She winked at the Troise twins, which made Rita's head spin and Rina wobble, probably wondering about the strong possibility of hallucination.

“I'm gonna do the voices from the deck too,” Liz continued, following Grieffe to a couple of deck cannons and placing the cannonballs where Grieffe directed. “But, being realistic about it, I know that I'm not gonna be much to watch compared to your show and the cannon-obsessed mad scientist.”

“Are you ever?” Grieffe asked coolly, already at work.

Liz winced dramatically, which was _still weird_ because her head was _see-through._ “Ouch, Kanone, that hurts me inside,” she said, a hand over her heart as she sashayed over towards the stairs and unhooked something that resemble the speaking piece of a Den Den Mushi telephone. “I'm really fucking pained by your tough love.”

“Good.”

Liz rolled her eyes but otherwise ignored the response, instead lifting the speaking piece to her mouth and making a low-pitched humming sound that seemed to make the whole ship vibrate and definitely made the hairs on Rita's neck stand on end. The noise was far louder than it rightly should have been, sounding like it was coming from several places at once, and Rita wouldn't have been surprised if the other ship was able to hear it. (Which was probably the point.)

Glancing towards the approaching ship again, which was now close enough that Rita could see the movement of figures on deck, Rita realized the source of the continuous hissing sound that had started when Rouge had shouted for fog. There was some kind of smoke or steam being exuded from House Royale, billowing out from small ports in the ship's sides. It hadn't been immediate at first, but now it looked like it wouldn't be long before the entire ship was hidden in a white cloud, except that Liz chose that moment to flick a switch that started a low whir sound that pushed the fog out over the waves to give House Royale a haunting entourage and train.

Rita could see a few distant figures on the other ship, who had been moving about excitedly, just stop. Rita understood that; she'd likely be the same if the ship she was hoping to board suddenly started producing white fog and strange humming sounds. And, though Rita didn't know if the other ship could see that well, didn't appear to have anyone solid on board.

Rina tapped Rita's shoulder then, and Rita looked questioningly at her see-though sister. Rina was looking up in an expression akin to horror, and Rita followed her twin's line of sight up to the crow's nest and topmost sails. The ship was... bleeding?

Blood was streaming down the mast and sails, pouring from nowhere logically evident and soaking the ship red from the top down. Rita immediately gasped and stumbled against the railing, but as the blood reached the deck and started to spread, Rita noticed that something wasn't quite right about it. At first glance, it had _looked_ like liquid, but as the blood seeped under Rita's feet, Rita realized there wasn't any liquid, the ship was just... turning red in a way that looked like there was.

Once the ship was entirely blood red, surrounded by white fog and low moans, House Royale's monochrome coloring faded from the top down. The false blood seemed to dry away under the sun, leaving nothing behind but a transparent ghost ship that flickered with a bluish tinge and was only slightly less translucent than the people on it.

“What the fuck,” Rita's twin repeated softly, and Rita couldn't help but silently agree.

Looking around, the Troise twins saw that Grieffe was still at work with her cannons, looking like she did this everyday, and Liz wasn't quite busy enough providing haunting sound effects not to wink at them again. They looked towards Rouge then, who had lost her intense expression of concentration and now simply looked relaxed as her ghostly fingers tapped an absent rhythm on the transparent railing.

Feeling quite beyond confusion now, Rita cautiously looked towards the other ship again. Though the pirates were still drawing closer, all the figures on board had stopped moving and Rita assumed them to be staring at the ghostly apparition of House Royale. Rita personally would have turned her ship around when House Royale had apparently started dripping blood, but perhaps Grand Line pirates thought that sort of thing merited closer inspection instead of fleeing for their lives?

“Wailing Widows ready, captain,” Grieffe said then, rising back to her perfect posture, looking particularly eerie with her loosely-tied and transparent white hair, long around her see-through shoulders. “On your mark.”

Rouge nodded, smiling as she regarded the other ship. “Put the first through their main sail,” she said thoughtfully. “To the left – my left – of the Jolly Roger's head. Make it close, but don't graze the face – give it some space to breathe. On Liz's... third scream. Make them count, Liz.”

Grieffe immediately made the adjustments to her cannon, lining up the specified shot, and Liz's humming and moaning quickly grew louder and much more high-pitched. The first mate started to make small shrill sounds that sounds later broke into the most blood-curdling, hair-curling shriek that Rita had ever heard in her life. It was earsplitting, excruciating, and cut-off thankfully shortly like it had been forcefully stifled.

Seeing that Rina had put her fingers in her ears, Rita quickly copied and tried not to faint at being able to actually see the fingers in Rina's ears. The captain had said to fire on the third scream, after all, and the first mate was definitely making each one count and each one worse.

The second scream was just as knife-like and numbing, and the third was pure agony made sound, and as soon as it cut off, Grieffe pulled and the deck shook with the _boom_ of cannon-fire and the smell of smoke filled the air. This was instantly followed by a fourth scream that wasn't coming from Liz, but from the cannonball itself, a shrill and even more high-pitched sound that grew fainter as it traveled through the air, almost impossible to see in its transparency. Rita could only note its position when a hole seemed to rip itself into the main sail, exactly to the left of the large Jolly Roger painted on it, and the terrible scream ended.

“Now... to the left – my left – of the captain,” Rouge said, watching the other ship's crew start to scrabble about in what was presumably panic with a dangerous little smirk. “Mirror the mark we've made on his sail and see if you can get it just above his shoulder; fire on Liz's second scream. Then put one on the other side of the Jolly Roger, fired on a single scream immediately after the second lands, then put a fourth over the captain's right shoulder before the third even lands.”

It happened again. Liz screamed twice more, just as awful as the first three, and Grieffe fired as soon as the second died down. The invisible, _screaming_ cannonball shrieked past the figure wearing the enormous hat, sending the other ship's captain flailing. Liz screamed again and Grieffe put another Wailing Widow through the deflating main sail and then another past the terrified captain, fired in flawless succession.

Rita had not seen someone move so quickly or deftly since watching Liz complete her morning katas, but such a display with such massive weaponry was far more terrifying. Logic and fictional novels had put Rita under the impressions that cannons required a crew to be operated, but apparently Grieffe had worked around that. It wasn't hard to imagine those small screaming missiles replaced with larger and more destructive ones, aimed at something worse than just a sail.

While Liz hummed and moaned into her speaking piece some more, and House Royale turned Ghost Ship continued sailing on course with its train of white fog, the Troise twins were torn between watching the other pirates panic distantly and keeping an eye on Rouge to see what the softly smiling captain would do next. They had four eyes between them, but both could only watch one at a time.

“One more through the sail, please, Grieffe,” Rouge said casually, like she was ordering tea and cakes at a restaurant. “Directly between the eyes. On Liz's fifth scream. Don't hit their mast; they can't patch that as easily as their sail.”

Rita winced prematurely, then again through every one of Liz's terrible screams. With each one, the pirates on the approaching vessel looked like they were scrabbling about in panic. When Grieffe finally fired after the fifth, Rita thought she could hear them screaming, besides the cannonball's as it blasted through the sagging sail, directly between the Jolly Roger's eyes.

The implication wasn't lost on Rita, and it wasn't lost on the other ship's captain either. At least, Rita supposed it wasn't by the way the enormous hat disappeared from view, like the captain had suddenly decided that he desperately needed to kiss the deck. The rest of the figures on the ship either continued to scramble about without direction or stayed low and gathered around their dropped captain.

Rouge laughed, bright and delighted while the Ghost Ship trick seemed to maintain itself without her now. (It had been her, Rita assumed. Who else could it be? What else could it be?) Liz grinned wickedly in response to her captain's delight, keeping up her haunted hums and moans, upping her game to whispers and murmurs about watery graves and dead men walking. Grieffe, last but not least, just waved away the smoke from her cannons and patted (Caressed?) them the way one might a loyal and beloved pet.

“Fire the remaining Wailing Widows at your leisure, gunmaster,” Rouge said, “so long as you do them no unnecessary harm. I believe our new friends are about to give up their chase; encourage them as needed.”

“It would be my pleasure, captain,” Grieffe replied, focusing her eye on the other ship.

Rouge nodded approvingly at her gunmaster and finally turned her beaming attentions back to the Troise twins, as though inviting questions. Rita and Rina could only stare back, too full of questions to voice any and too full of general world-upended-ness to speak. Also, they were partly distracted by Grieffe and Liz in the background.

Grieffe raised a hand, Liz shrieked accordingly, and there was another _boom_ followed by an inhuman scream. This Wailing Widow didn't appear to hit anything, but it sent the other pirates, shrieking and screaming themselves, scattering over their ship, which was now desperately turning away from its course after the House Royale.

Rita took note of the cannons on the ship's side and her eyes widened. What if-?

“Oh, don't worry about them firing back. Grieffe and Liz can handle that,” Rouge assured them easily, her shrug looking particularly odd when Rita could see her bones and the deck through her chest. “And the point of tricks like this is to off-balance them so much that they don't even consider returning fire.”

Rouge raised a ghostly hand, as though admiring it, and said teasingly, “We're obviously intangible, so return fire would just be a waste of ammunition.”

Rouge looked out towards the other ship again, which was very definitely giving up chasing them down and doing their utmost to sail the opposite direction by how they kept turning. Grieffe and Liz encouraged that by sending a couple more screams and another shrieking cannonball after them. The original Blackjack Pirates looked like theywere having the time of their lives, but Rita would bet that the trying-to-flee pirates were having no such thing.

“See, look, there they go,” Rouge said fondly. “Eyes really do tell the best lies. Anyone can just _say_ something, you know, but people really believe what they see.”

Liz shrieked; Grieffe fired. _Boom_ and scream.

“...Even if it's absolutely mad.”

Rita had nothing to say to that and, by the lack of response, neither did Rina. Instead, the Troise twins watched alongside Rouge as the distance grew between them and the other ship, which now had a somewhat see-through sail itself due to the holes. House Royale turned Ghost Ship soon put their previous pursuers behind them and it was all Rita could do to stay upright and watch.

As soon as they (or Rita, at the least) could no longer distinguish individual figures on the vessel's deck, Liz hung up her speaking piece and went down into the galley. Through the deck, Rita saw the first mate pull several levers; with a few clicks and moving gears, the hiss and whir of the fog-makers disappeared. Rita was very glad when Liz returned to the deck, because looking at the complicated intestines of House Royale in this state was very similar to looking at the complicated intestines of any of the people on board. Which was to say: unpleasant.

Liz walked up behind Rouge, put a hand on Rouge's shoulder, which Rouge put her own hand over for a moment, and suddenly the both of them were opaque again, from Rouge's freckled skin to Liz's scarred shoulders. Rita could no longer see Rouge's bones or the bunch of Liz's muscles, which was an even greater relief than the fleeing pirates.

“Get some rest,” Liz ordered her captain fondly. “We've got it from here.”

“Mmmm, yep,” Rouge agreed easily.

Liz moved away from Rouge then, walking past Grieffe, who was also thankfully opaque now and focused on returning her precious cannons to perfection, with a casual, “Nicely done, snowflake.” Grieffe ignored this of course and Liz went up the stairs, entirely unbothered, to take over the ship's wheel from Grieffe's devices.

Rita looked down at her own hands now and felt the greatest relief yet at their opaqueness. She couldn't see a single muscle or bone, and only the faintest outline of veins through her colorful and definitely not see-through skin. Looking at her sister, Rita saw that Rina too had been returned to the world of the living.

When the other vessel was becoming a shape on the horizon and the white fog had long-since dissipated over the waves, Rouge let out a low exhale and House Royale returned to full color again. There was no sky through the white sails or sea and ship through the golden deck; like fading in reverse, the Ghost Ship ceased as though it had never happened.

“That was fun,” Rouge said, yawning tiredly before she rolled over towards the door that lead most directly towards the captain's cabin, obviously with the intention of taking a good long nap now that her work was done. (And it had been her work. It had to have been, even if Rita had no idea how. Who else could it be? What else could it be?)

Even though neither they nor the ship had become intangible at any point, Rita cautiously toed the opaque wood of the deck just in case. It was solid – of course it was solid, it had never not been solid – and Rita let that last bit of unintentional tension go.

Only to tense again when Grieffe approached them, done with her cannons for the moment, with a non-expression that Rita would have very hesitantly guessed to be benign and somewhat pleased. The gunmaster stopped in front of the Troise twins, shorter than them but intimidating enough for somone five times her height. Grieffe looked them up and down, then met their eyes expectantly.

Rita looked into Grieffe single eye and then at the eyepatch, struck with the memory of there very definitely being something beneath it. Rita hadn't been paying much attention, but she was sure that there had been nothing unordinary about Grieffe's right eye, which begged the question as to why it was hidden beneath the eye-patch. Even if she were blind in it, Grieffe didn't seem the type to care about appearances.

After a long moment where none of them said anything, Grieffe stated, “That is my spyglass.”

Rita looked down at said spyglass in her (blessedly opaque) hand and wordlessly held it out for the white-haired gunmaster, who had a ghost-like quality to her even when solid and accepted the spyglass back graciously.

“Thank you,” Grieffe said, in the same manner one might to someone holding open a door for them, deftly snapping the tool shut and tucking it in its proper place on her tool belt all without breaking eye-contact.

After another long moment... “That trick was one of the many capabilities of the Awakened form of the Paramecia class Devil Fruit called the Iro Iro no Mi,” Grieffe informed them, a small smile on her face, likely at the memory of the rather traumatizing thing that had just happened.

Then she became more serious and said, “I must tend to my mechanisms. If you have any questions, do not hesitate to ask someone else. I assure you that it is not uncommon for new recruits to feel unnerved by such tricks, thus do not be ashamed if you must be sick and simply direct yourself to the nearest railing.”

With a small nod, as though approving her own words, Grieffe turned around and walked off, likely to look after her mechanisms and scrub her cannons and the fog-makers free of small imperfections perceptible to only herself after a single use. Looking after new crewmembers, as Grieffe had previously stated, was not one of her many specialities.

Stomach swirling, Rita did as suggested.

 

**{6}**

 

“ _I believe this will be an adequately suitable addition to our repertoire of trickery-based tactics,” Grieffe stated firmly, swinging her tight braid back over her shoulder as she rose from her demonstration of her newest creation. She turned back to her crewmates expectantly._

_Baiebleu did not disappoint Grieffe's expectations. The self-declared first mate, who really should not have been out of bed with the large and hideous injury taking up most of her left shoulder and half her back, was looking at Grieffe with no small amount of disbelief. As Rouge was fond of saying, it seemed that if Baiebleu's oddly-colored eyebrows went any higher, they would merge with the rest of her unnatural purple hair._

“ _...But why the fuck would you even think to_ make _screaming cannonballs?” Baiebleu said finally._

_Grieffe gave that statement the unimpressed stare it deserved before looking pointedly towards their captain, who had her hands clasped so tightly together in delight that her freckles were standing out on her knuckles. Rouge's smile was so wide that it looked physically painful and so manic that the future looked painful for any unfortunate foes that would cross their path._

“ _We are going to have_ so _much fun with those!” Rouge declared with complete certainty, her hair flickering through all the colors of the rainbow in her excitement. “Oh, I know_ just _the thing to use those for!”_

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't worry, as soon as Liz is done keeping them on course, she comes over to help the Troise twins cope with things like a good first mate. Rouge is capable of some pretty freaky stuff.


	7. Daily Learning Goals

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The newer members of the Blackjack Pirates adjust to being a part of the New Blackjack Pirates.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a collection of things that happened on the journey through the Grand Line and East Blue, not in chronological order, and focuses on basically everyone except Rouge. It's not especially important to the story and you can ignore it if you find these things dull.  
> The next chapter starts on Dawn Island and returns to Rouge's POV, where it'll stay for the foreseeable future.

 

_Rina's List of 'Things I Have Learned On This Journey'_

Item 1: It's easier to get around the law and work inside the law than I thought.

Item 2: Rumor is faster than seems logically possible.

_Side note: It's possible to start a worldwide ghost tale for fun._

 

**{7}**

 

The rest of the Grand Line was terribly boring in comparison to the Ghost Ship incident. House Royale sailed entirely unbothered straight through to the East Blue Calm Belt, which was almost identical to sailing through its southern sister. The Sea Kings either intelligently or instinctively or simply luckily kept their distance from House Royale, and they soon found themselves in the calm and notoriously peaceful waters of East Blue.

Liz immediately commandeered the ship to a small island that was a common stopover for people coming in and out of the Grand Line, so mostly marines and people traveling on government-type business. Apparently, no offense to Rina's cooking, Liz wanted a hot meal made of food that hadn't been in ship's storage for months. The first mate seemed entirely unconcerned that the small island wasn't exactly welcoming or even remotely non-hostile to pirates and criminals.

“Good fucking thing that we don't have wanted posters or some shit, then, eh?” Liz said, grin wide and posture careless. “It's pretty fucking arrogant for rats to walk right into the doghouse, we know, but we also know what the fuck we're doing. Don't you fucking worry, girls, we've got this shit.”

Rina wanted to say something, ideally a very logical point about how an island teeming with people from the Marines and the World Government was different to pirates and Sea Kings in the open waters. There were consequences here, very _real_ consequences, and tricks and force would only bring down more consequences on them.

But Liz walked right up to the Port Authority of Stobbin regardless of all the valid points Rina didn't quite manage to make, although the first mate thankfully removed her sunglasses and put a shirt and a brown trench-coat on. While Rina and Rita held their breath behind her, Liz produced a bunch of neatly organized papers and a curt story about transporting goods belonging to the Hayes Supply company.

The Port Authority accepted the papers, boredly looked them over, then looked Liz over and said, “These seem to be in order. How long will you be in port?”

“Long enough to restock before catching the tide tomorrow morning.”

Then the Port Authority stamped one of their papers, returned them, and said, “Enjoy your stay.”

Just like that.

“You can fucking breathe now, by the way,” Liz said as she led the girls to the inn where they'd be staying. “I told you that we got this shit. And it's totally fucking legit too; Kanone got those papers from Della to make her a proper representative of the Hayes Supply company in an emergency.”

“And this is an, um, emergency?” Rina's twin asked.

Liz shrugged. “Well, we're nearly out of coffee, so I'd say so. Don't worry about shit, we'll just bribe a few assholes if things get sticky, and if things get hot then we'll bash the pan and hop the fireplace. But we're not even here for a day, so that's not fucking likely.”

Rina still didn't feel at ease. This town was full of white coats and clean streets, and she couldn't quite understand how a pirate could be so calm and fearless here. They were surrounded by marines and marines' ships. Rina was an associate and abetter of pirates if not a pirate herself now, so it felt like they were one wrong word away from being hauled off to prison forever.

“Look,” Liz said, pinching the bridge of her nose as she replaced her sunglasses, “just keep fucking chill and don't do any suspicious shit 'til tomorrow afternoon and we're golden, got it?” She opened the door of their inn and ushered them both inside, murmuring, “So long as you don't blurt anything real fucking obvious, we'll be fine.”

It was just then that a familiar voice, bubbling above the noise of the dining area, said sweetly, “Ooh! A ghost ship! I love a good ghost story! Tell me more, good sir, and I'll buy you a drink for the tale!”

Rina followed the sound to see Rouge sitting at the bar, with a pint in hand, cane next to her stool, and a crowd marines _surrounding_ her. Beside Rina, her twin made an eep sort of noise while Liz pinched the bridge of her nose again and made a strangled sound like she was dying inside. Rina felt torn between both reactions and thus opted to stay in horrified silence for lack of a good middle ground coming to her mind.

One of the marines loudly quipped something about Rouge being too pretty a lady to ever have to spend money on a drink and Rouge laughed delightedly. With an enormous sigh, Liz gestured for the Troise twins to follow and seated them at a table near enough to eavesdrop without straining. It was also in Rouge's immediate line of sight, and Liz shot a glare at the captain as they went.

“I thought shitty Kanone wouldn't fucking go shopping alone and leave Rouge unsupervised with people,” Liz grumbled lowly as she signaled for a waitress, “but apparently not.”

“Those are marines!” Rina hissed at the first mate.

“Yeah,” Liz agreed tiredly, “all bars here are crawling with them. Just listen and try to keep your faces straight. What'll you have to drink?”

Rina spent the next half-hour listening to a bunch of marines regale Rouge with a tale that had recently sprung up, about a ghost ship sailing through the Grand Line, one that seemed normal until it started dripping blood and fired invisible screaming cannonballs. Rouge laughed and gasped in all the right places, charming the marines completely. She ended up putting away quite a bit of booze without actually having to pay for any of it or anyone else's.

It was horrible. Rina was amazed that rumors of the Ghost Ship trick had managed to reach this island before they themselves – the people who were _responsible_ for them – and cringed every time Rouge opened her mouth to say something.

With every giggling question and probing flirtation, Rina felt convinced that the marines were going to find Rouge suspicious and figure out that she was actually a pirate, then they'd all be thrown in prison and left to rot forever for piracy and ghost impersonation or something similar. The marines were getting increasingly tipsy, but Rina could still barely believe it as Rouge all but had the men curled around her freckled pinky finger.

“Amazing just how fucking fast tall tales travel the Blues, huh?” Liz asked lazily, swirling her mug before taking a swig. “Everybody loves a damn good story, especially when it involves a band of shitty pirates getting a scare, ghosts, and doesn't offend anyone important.”

“What is she _doing?”_ Rina demanded quietly, complete bewildered as a marine started retelling the entire story as he'd heard it from a friend. He made it gorier and generally exaggerated everything far beyond what had happened, and Rouge was listening avidly and openly encouraging him.

“Why inspire rumors if you're not going to enjoy them?” Liz asked dryly in return.

“But those are _marines,_ ” Rina whispered again, more exasperated than panicked this time around.

Liz shrugged. “Bigger bunch of gossips than a gaggle of grandmothers.”

It took Rina a few moments to unravel that sentence, during which her twin finally leaned forward, not taking her eyes off Rouge and the increasingly drunken marines surrounding her.

“Rouge-san has a bit of an ego, doesn't she?” Rita asked quietly.

Liz relaxed posture didn't change, but she turned sharp eyes on Rina's sister. “Yeah, yeah, she does,” she said, smirking slightly. “Who doesn't like having their work appreciated? That's part of why Jack was born: getting credit where credit's due without the shitty part of having to pay.”

Rouge laughed then, a happy sound that rang true through the whole room. She congratulated the marine wholeheartedly and prompted the next man to tell his version of the tale, for surely he had heard the rumors and had a good story in him too.

“Rouge was always good at skipping out on paying,” Liz murmured.

 

**{7}**

 

Item 3: Devil Fruits are terrifying.

_Side Note: People who get clever about using Devil Fruits are infinitely more terrifying._

 

**{7}**

 

“You said it was an... Awakened form of a Devil Fruit?” Rita asked hesitantly.

Grieffe paused in her work, which seemed to consist of drawing complicated blueprints today, and looked over to the twins standing in the doorway of her workroom. She sat up straighter and beckoned them in with a blank expression, watching them silently while they entered in awe of the complex machinery and other massive inventions around them.

“I did,” the gunmaster confirmed once the door was shut, looking at them with a glimmer of curiosity. “I also suggested that you seek answers from another person several days ago when the incident occurred. And I am certain that Rouge-san and Baiebleu-san both gave their own, more detailed explanations as to the Iro Iro no Mi and the abilities of its user.”

Rina and Rita exchanged a look between them, both remembering said explanations given by the captain and first mate. They had certainly been detailed explanations, even good ones, and courteous to the Troise twins' newness to the seas and the terrifying display. But Liz was prone to jokes and Rouge was unsettingly upbeat, and the twins found that they were craving some cleanly spoken, straightforward, unadulterated answers from someone who wasn't smiling.

“We'd like to ask _you_ a few questions, Grieffe-san, if you don't mind,” Rina said.

“I do not mind. Ask your questions.”

The twins exchanged another look, daring the other to ask a question first. But the problem was that they didn't understand in a way such that they didn't know how _to_ understand. So there was just a long and awkward silence, which Grieffe thankfully didn't seem to mind any more than the prospect of answering questions.

“I imagine that you have already had Devil Fruits explained to you,” Grieffe said finally, “along with their classes and general weakness, and had Rouge's most favorite tricks described. I refuse to explain the intricacies and therefore weaknesses of the Iro Iro no Mi, but... Awakening... I can explain that if you wish. I can imagine that it is something that Baiebleu-san and Rouge-san may have neglected in their... nostalgia.”

Grieffe studied them both, finding her answer in their faces. “Please have a seat,” she said, gesturing towards a cleared workbench and fully turning her chair as they did. “Personally, I do not know why your grandmother sent you with us, and accepted you only for the sake of Rouge-san's health. But you are crewmembers now, regardless of my early opinions, and I will see you safe and well through this burdening life.

“The cause of a Devil Fruit Awakening is widely unknown and the effects differ from fruit to fruit, but Awakenings have been generally known to empower existing abilities and bring new abilities. In Zoan class fruits, the users have been known to turn from mere animal to true beast, becoming larger and monstrous. Several of these guard the Impel Down prison.

“In Paramecia... the fruits are so varied that Awakenings are viewed as unpredictable,” Grieffe said, her tone making her opinion of people who thought this clear. “In my general experience, however, I have found that Awakenings increase capability and extend a user's conscious influence from just themselves to any surrounding objects and individuals as well.”

Grieffe looked thoughtful then. “It is a logical extension, really,” she said. “I had often wondered how many Devil Fruit users were able to affect and keep their clothing.” A horrified expression briefly flickered across Grieffe's face then, one that spoke of deeply haunting imaginings. “And I have remained thankful for it.”

Rina and Rita again exchanged a look and resolved never to ask.

“Wait,” Rina's sister said suddenly, flipping up a finger. “That's Zoan -” She flipped up another finger. “- and Paramecia -” Then a third finger flipped up. “- but what about Logia class Devil Fruits?”

Rina's face screwed up. “Zoans are the animals,” she repeated, with the weariness of someone who had been having an exasperated sibling lecture them for several hours. “Paramecia is the... weird ones; but what're the Logia ones again?”

“The elemental ones,” Rita supplied, rolling her eyes with the weariness of someone who had been lecturing their confused sibling for several hours. Rina didn't appreciate the gesture and stuck her tongue out at her twin.

“An Awakened Logia class Devil Fruit?” Grieffe said, with a hint of something that the twins' heads snap to look at her. The rigid gunmaster's single eye was wide and her skin was paler than usual; unlike her regular placid expression, she looked surprised and even apprehensive.

“I have never seen an Awakened Logia class Devil Fruit,” Grieffe said after a few stunned moments. “I do not believe I wish to. I imagine the result would be... spectacular.”

 

**{7}**

 

Item 4: It's possible for whirlpools and fire tornadoes to exist simultaneously.

_Side note: I hate the Grand Line._

 

**{7}**

 

Rina reacquainted herself with a familiar piece of railing and heaved the contents of her stomach over the side. Her sister had spent of their early days at sea talking about the sheer chaos of the Grand Line – regular compasses not working and the weather being utterly unpredictable – but Rina had discounted most of it because Rita's source had been pirate-themed romance novels.

“Romance novels aren't supposed to be _right_ about things,” Rina moaned to her twin beside her, and then she puked over the side again. That the books had been was almost as disturbing as the impossible weather itself and the equally impossible maneuvers that House Royale had managed to survive it.

Behind them both, Liz and Rouge just laughed at them.

“Oh, poor Na-chan and Ta-chan! You didn't expect good weather to last forever in the Grand Line, did you?” Rouge asked.

Liz stopped laughing and hummed. “Felt like it for awhile,” she mused. “That was an unusually good wind we had. We'll be out of the Grand Line faster than expected unless we get some more shit like that to balance things out.”

“Please no,” Rina whimpered.

Rita threw up over the side in agreement.

“I don't think we will,” Rouge replied thoughtfully. “I think it's simply that the congratulatory blessing someone put on our sails has worn off. We're on our own from here on out, but we should send them a thank you when we can.”

“Your Cee friend?” Liz asked, obviously skeptical. “How do you know the fire shit wasn't her?”

Rina didn't know who Cee was, but a part of her somehow wasn't surprised that Portgas D. Rouge, who had appeared from nowhere and had far more secrets than Rina was aware existed, had a friend that could control the weather. Just... alright then.

Rouge laughed. “I don't, and it very much aligns with Cee-san's sense of humor to follow one with the other, but it never hurts to thank the world for a little good luck. If I've got a benefactor out there who's appreciated my work, I'm going to be meekly grateful and hope no one sends another whirlpool my way because they didn't.”

Liz snorted. “Fair enough.”

 

**{7}**

 

Item 5: I never ever want to meet a Shichibukai.

_Side note: I never ever want to meet a Yonko._

 

**{7}**

 

“Kanone says we're nearly at Stobbin and restaurant food,” Liz announced to the breakfast table at large, leaning over Rouge's shoulder to look at the daily newspaper in her captain's hands. “Hey, it's that new hot young thing that took your title.”

Rouge laughed. “It's hard to take a technical title that I wasn't using,” she objected playfully. “Queens and empresses are different, anyway.”

“Whatever, same thing,” Liz said with a shrug, pouring herself the rest of their coffee and frowning fiercely at her only half-filled mug.

“I want to meet this Boa-chan,” Rouge announced to the table, dropping her newspaper to slide her own coffee over to her first mate, who immediately dumped it in her own mug and chugged. “She's a Kuja and seems like a lovely girl.”

Rina, who was reading the relevant article, said disbelievingly, “This says she's a Shichibukai!”

“So?” Rouge asked, reaching for the teapot at Rita's request.

“And got an unprecedented bounty after a _single_ campaign! At eighteen!”

“ _Eighteen_?” Rita repeated.

Rouge sighed wistfully as she filled a cup of tea for Rita and herself. “A girl after my own heart.”

“Gotta support fellow female pirates,” Liz intervened. “We're real fucking outnumbered, so we have to stick together against shit. By the way, Rouge, I think that whole fucking thing reeked of Shakky and the Spider Pirates, so we should give her another call if you really wanna meet with those Kuja cuties.”

“...Isn't she a little young for you, Liz?” Rouge asked, bemused.

“Far too young,” Liz agreed, sighing wistfully. “Damn teenage pirates. I'm such an old lady now, Rouge. Fucking damn, have you seen a photo of old Edward since you got back?”

“Unfortunately not.”

“Me neither, but if he looks half as old as I feel I've gotten since we last saw him, I'm going to fucking scream,” Liz said flatly. “Seriously, Rouge, I might even fight him for reminding me of my own fucking mortality, and challenging a fucking Yonko will probably throw out my back or something.”

Rina made a face. “Do I even want to know what a Yonko is?”

“Probably not,” Rita replied, taking a sip of tea.

“Is it worse than a Shichibukai?”

Rouge and Liz exchanged a look, then laughed.

“Depends on which one of which you're talking about,” Rouge said. “Liz, the newspapers can only tell a person so much. Come, tell us all, who's made a name for themselves these days and who should we be looking out for, titles or no?”

 

**{7}**

 

Item 6: There are lesbians who still don't have their love lives sorted by forty-plus.

_Side note: I'm doing fine._

 

**{7}**

 

Rina thought it was a rather pertinent piece of character development on her behalf that when she walked into the kitchen and saw a very unexpected and very naked sight, her immediate reaction was to rather courageously say, “Don't you both have quarters? Do you have to do this in here? I make _food_ in here!”

Then she fell back on wondering if she was hallucinating, which ordinarily would have been her first guess, but the strange sights she'd seen recently had discouraged her of second guessing reality. If she was or not, both were terrible options. She didn't want this to be real, but she also would have hoped that her subconscious would have better taste than to conjure the first mate and gunmaster entwined with each other.

“Don't tell Rouge,” Liz ordered.

Grieffe's eye twitched as she extracted herself from Liz and reached for her shirt, throwing Liz's trousers at her face as she did. “As Baiebleu-san just said, we would appreciated Troise-san, if you did not reveal our entanglement to the captain... and your sister as well.”

“Would you get in trouble for this?” Rina asked hesitantly. She didn't want to do anything to get her in trouble in Rouge, who was as terrifying as she was kind, but she didn't want to make the first mate and gunmaster angry either, because they were fairly fearsome themselves.

Liz and Grieffe exchanged a look between them.

“Not... precisely,” Grieffe said, pulling on her pants now.

Liz sighed and pinched her nose, trousers still in hand. “Look, it's just that we'll both owe Rouge a fuckton of money if she finds out about this. She called this shit, like, thirty years ago.”

“Th-thirty y-years?” Rina sputtered. “How long has this been happening?!”

“Honestly? Not until we met up after Rouge called from your place,” Liz supplied, finally pulling on her trousers as Grieffe threw her shirt into her face. “Long overdue, really. It was, as the snowflake described it, 'an unappreciated if not unexpected development'.”

Liz leered at Grieffe then. “At least in _her_ opinion. My appreciation on t-”

Grieffe hit the first mate in the stomach with her own sheathed swords under the pretense of handing them over, making Liz grunt. “Eliza,” she said coolly, “you need not speak and give me more reasons why this is a terrible idea. I am no longer young and naive, though I am obviously still prone to foolishness.”

“Aw, snowflake, you're so flattering,” Liz cooed.

“Eliza,” Grieffe warned.

“Grieffe,” Liz returned with a smirk.

Rina closed her eyes. “I can't tell anyone about what I didn't see,” she said immediately, because while she stuck her hands up strangers' vaginas for a living, this felt remarkably like walking in on her parents and that still felt wrong no matter her profession. “And I have to make dinner, so can you please leave so I can not see anything with my eyes open?”

“Agreed,” Grieffe said flatly, and the sound of footsteps moved away from House Royale's kitchen. “Another time, Baiebleu-san.”

Liz chuckled, and Rina felt a large hand settle fondly on her shoulder. “Alright, we're going,” the first mate agreed, before her tone turned serious and she whispered, “Seriously, please don't tell Rouge. I made that bet when I was seventeen and thought I had no chance whatsoever, and I'm not sure that I even have that much money.”

“Okay...?”

 

**{7}**

 

Item 7: East Blue is the opposite of dry.

_Side note: (See what I did there?)_

 

**{7}**

 

“Um, I don't mean to offend anyone,” Rina's sister began cautiously, “but it's breakfast and everyone in the room is drinking.”

Rina looked up and then around the room. “What, coffee and tea?” she asked, before quickly realizing that the people in the inn's dining area were very definitely not drinking coffee and tea, but instead beverages of a much more alcoholic nature.

Everyone. At breakfast.

“Yeah,” Liz said, plopping down at the table with a pint in hand. “What of it?” She took a swig of something that smelled remarkably like poison. “Damn, I forgot how much I fucking love East Blue.”

Rouge laughed and reached into the middle of the table for the condiments, where there was a bottle of whiskey that was quickly and liberally applied to her tea. “Liz,” she chided fondly, “you called it the 'garbage sea of weak sauce' the other day.”

“You agreed with me,” Liz retorted, then explained to the twins, “East Blue is considered the weakest and most peaceful of seas, so getting a good fight here is fucking hard, but damn do these shitty, weak sauce, garbage people know how to drink.”

“Drunk Blue,” Grieffe said, looking very unimpressed as she seated herself between her captain and first mate. “How I endeavored to forget.”

Rina tried to make words come out. “...What?”

Rouge shot her an amused look. “East Blue is where most of the world's breweries are located,” the captain explained, “and its culture has a unique and corresponding tolerance for drinking.” She swirled her spoon in her tea, watching the liquid whirl. “I wonder if that has anything to do with young Shanks-kun's time in this sea; I remember him being quite good at holding his drink for a teenage boy.”

Rina tried to say something again. “... _What?”_

“Basically everyone is totally fucking sloshed here all the time,” Liz said in summary. “Which, in my opinion, is why East is the most peaceful of the Blues – breaking out the good stuff before eight in the morning. They throw the _best_ parties here.”

“It is a miracle that the entire population has not died of poisoning,” Grieffe said flatly, pointedly serving herself a whiskey-free cup of tea and shooting her captain an even more pointed look. She then turned her one-eyed glare on the Troise twins. “As medical professionals, I expect you not to follow their example.”

Rina chose not to speak up and say that, as medical professionals, they were actually already well-acquainted with whiskey. And she silently changed the course of her hand to reach for the juice instead, ignoring the knowing twinkle in Rouge's eye.

“Oh fuck,” Liz realized, setting down her pint. “Garp entrusted Rouge's kid to _drunks.”_

 

**{7}**

 

Item 8: The world is a terrible, terrible place.

_Side note: This is a lesson I'd like to stop learning._

 

**{7}**

 

Rina, reading and studying on the deck with her sister, watched out of the corner of her eye as the first mate went up the stairs to stand by the gunmaster at the wheel. Dawn Island had come into view not long ago, and the captain has been sitting at the bow and staring at it since, but a worrying grimace had been crossing Grieffe's face recently as they approached. Liz had noticed it too and, since the gunmaster hadn't spoken up, was clearly going to investigate.

Rina exchanged a look with her twin and they both strained their ears to listen, pretending to be intent on the books and notes in front of their faces. Nothing had happened to their knowledge, but who knew what the gunmaster's single eye had spotted?

“Kanone,” Liz said as she stepped up beside Grieffe.

“Baiebleu-san,” Grieffe greeted blandly.

The two women stood in silence so long that Rina turned three pages without reading any of them.

“There is a foul smell on the winds around this island,” Grieffe said finally. “Something recent and rotten. I wonder what we are sailing towards and... if Shakuyaku-san knew when she sent us. I do not think the captain of the Spiders would betray us, but she knows our might and I recall her to be fond of pulling strings.”

“That she is,” Liz agreed, tone fond before it turned hard. “What do you smell?”

Grieffe was silent for a long moment.

“Trash,” she said, “and fire.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The East Blue being a sea of drinkers comes from [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/OnePiece/comments/3uivtf/east_blue_the_party_sea/) and I think it's hilarious enough to include.


	8. Dawn Island

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The New Blackjack Pirates land on Dawn Island and reunite with an old crewmember, who has more to tell them than any of them expected.

 

They passed a shiny looking city – one that Rouge's younger self would have deemed 'tempting' and Grieffe's current self corrected to 'Goa Kingdom' – in favor of a village on the outer edges of the island that was apparently more welcoming to questionable strangers. Goa Kingdom was rather renowned for its snobbery, while Garp and Shanks definitely weren't, so Fushia Village seemed a more profitable place to poke around and make port.

Rouge grabbed her cane and waved off her first mate and the Troise twins. She hobbled down the plank herself to the the docks and the grumpy-looking man waiting at the forefront of a small crowd. He was studying House Royale with a suspicious eye under his hat and glasses, arms crossed, like he didn't quite trust the gleaming golden deck and bright white sails.

Rouge privately thought that smart of him, approaching him with her most innocent of beaming smiles, because she really wouldn't trust her at first glance either.

Or second glance. Or at all.

Liz's intense glaring from the ship's deck probably wasn't helping them look harmless. Her first mate really had to get used to Rouge going about on her own again, at least before Rouge lost it and screamed about being a grown woman with a babysitter.

“This is Fushia Village,” the man said. “I'm Mayor Woop Slap.”

“Captain Rouge,” Rouge greeted, bowing politely and then holding out a hand for the man to shake. He bowed and did, giving the honest and gentle handshake that Rouge would have expected of his position and her condition, as well as her immediate observations of him.

“I like your cane, Woop Slap-san,” Rouge flirted teasingly, leaning pointedly on her own.

The man relaxed minutely. “Thank you, captain,” he said, grip tightening on the cane in question, turning his eyes back over House Royale in all her glory. “That's an impressive ship you have there. What sort of business could the owner of a ship like that have in Fushia Village, may I ask?”

Rouge looked him dead in the eye and let her smile become a bit more real. There was a foul smell on the wind and an edge of tension to this town that spoke of very recent happenings here; she approved of his being cautious in polite hostility.

She would be finding a Den Den Mushi to call Shakky at the soonest opportunity, though. Garp, Shanks, Revolutionaries, and a foul, burnt smell in the air? This was a busy island. What exactly had the Spider Captain sent them into?

“Only looking for a dear friend, Woop Slap-san,” Rouge assured the man. “And no, that isn't code for hunting a bounty or seeking revenge or something of the like. I've heard my friend has passed through your village, but if we're intruding...”

“No, no,” Woop Slap replied, still somewhat apprehensive. “So long as you don't get up to anything that might ruin our good reputation, then you're welcome here, captain. We don't have an inn, though, so you'll have to sleep on your ship or we'll put you up with someone.”

“I would hate to put someone out of their own home.”

Woop Slap looked her over again, still obviously unsure what to make of her, and she kept smiling at him for a good measure of confusion. He kept looking up at their sails; Rouge guessed he was looking for a pirate flag that wasn't there. Interesting. A habit from Shanks' time here, maybe?

“Makino might be able to put you up,” Woop Slap said, obviously deciding against asking, turning towards the small crowd of villagers watching them intently. Ah, small towns. “Is Makino there?” he yelled at them. “Someone fetch Makino!”

“I'll get her!”

“No, she's on her way now! Look!”

“I'm here!” a female voice called above the crowd. A slender woman stepped into view, her green hair in a sensible braid, wearing a pretty but practical dress, and stepped forward to her mayor. “What is it? Who's here? Is it...”

The woman's jaw dropped open. “... _Captain?”_

“...Ah... Makino-chan,” Rouge replied, eyes wide despite herself. “So you were who Shakky was referring to. This is...” She looked for a truly suitable word and couldn't find one. “...unexpected.”

Behind Rouge, someone shouted, “HOLY SHIT! IS THAT LITTLE MACK?” There was heavy thump of someone jumping over the ship's railing onto the dock, then storming up it, and Rouge's first mate was suddenly beside her. “Oh my fuck, it _is._ ”

Liz turned around and hollered, “KANONE, GET YOUR ASS DOWN HERE, IT'S LITTLE MACK!”

“Makino, you... know these women?” Woop Slap asked, confused and wary.

Makino turned her head and blinked at him, then came back to herself. “Oh, yes! This is... well...”

Rouge intervened for both their sakes. “Makino-chan was a passenger on my ship when she was a teenager and became friends with much of the crew,” she supplied. “It's been years since we last saw each other and this is unexpected, but... very welcome.” Rouge gave a truly genuine smile now. “How have you been, Makino-chan?”

Before the woman could answer, Liz stepped forward and wrapped her up in massive hug. “Little Mack! You look great! SERIOUSLY, KANONE, GET YOUR BIG ASS IN GEAR AND GET DOWN HERE TO SAY HELLO!”

Released with her ears ringing, Makino looked at Rouge rather dazedly. “I've been well, thank you,” she said, then they both watched as Liz stormed off to berate Grieffe before Makino turned a bewildered look back on Rouge. “I heard... I heard some things about you not doing... so well, captain.”

Rouge waved a careless hand. “I've recently recovered from that,” she summarized quickly. “Long story. It's wonderful to see you, Makino-chan. What are you doing with yourself now?”

“I own a bar,” Makino said, still somewhat dazed, before she shook her head and her eyes seemed to get impossibly wider. She gave her mayor a nervous glance and then looked towards Rouge wearing an incredibly urgent expression. “And I have something very important to tell you. Mayor Woop Slap, if you and the others could give us a few minutes?”

The man looked terribly confused about all this, but he nodded anyway. “Just yell if you need us, Makino,” he said, before hurrying off to shoo the extremely curious villagers away, using the cane that Rouge had complimented as encouragement. Ah, a truly admirable man.

Once Woop Slap had ensured them some space, Rouge looked expectantly at the young woman she really hadn't expected to see. Makino had been their assistant cook and hadn't been part of the crew for all that long before the Blackjack Pirates had disbanded. Rouge couldn't think of why Shakky would keep tabs on Makino of all people; the only truly remarkable things about Makino were her goodhearted kindness and... oh, her other identity's awkward, sort-of friendship with a certain redheaded Roger Pirate.

A certain redheaded Roger Pirate who had recently spent a lot of time on this island, likely in this very village. Rouge could sense a lot of teasing in the immediate future. Ah, young people in embarrassing amounts of love; oh, that sounded like fun.

“What is it, Makino-chan?”

Makino leaned in towards Rouge, still looking urgent, and whispered, “Do you have a son?”

Rouge froze. She hadn't expected that either. How did-? Did-?

“Yes,” Rouge whispered back, now just as urgent. Makino hadn't known of Rouge's pregnancy and _shouldn't_ know of Rouge's son so that meant... “Do you know where he is?”

Makino paled. “What's his name?”

“Ace.”

Makino grabbed Rouge's hand then and Rouge couldn't do anything but let her as Makino said, “He's here. He's here on this island. I knew it. I _knew_ it. He has your name and your freckles and parts of your face, but _Garp_ had him and called him grandson, and he looked too young but so much like...” Makino trailed off, her grip Rouge's hand only getting tighter. “Is he Captain G...?”

“Yes,” Rouge whispered. “He's his. Oh please, Makino, is he really here? Please don't-”

“He's here, captain. He's here, I swear. He lives in this house on Mount Corvo, between here and Goa Kingdom, away from any towns to keep him safe. I can take you there, it's not far. I can take you there _now_ if you want.”

Rouge gripped Makino's hand back, pushing forward towards land. “ _Yes._ Yes, let's-”

“ROUGE!”

Rouge turned to where Liz was standing in the middle of the gangplank, with Grieffe at the top and the Troise twins hanging over the railing. They all had varying expressions of confusion, and the elder two were in stances of readiness at the sudden jolt in urgency. Liz had a hand on one her swords and Grieffe's fingers were hovering over one of her pistols.

Rouge gave the only explanation necessary:

“He's here,” she said, then louder, “Liz, he's _here!”_

 

**{8}**

 

It took less than three minutes for them to get underway. Makino gave short explanation to her fellow villagers and just walked away from any questions. Grieffe and the Troise twins kept to House Royale to make port and arrangements, sincerely wishing Rouge luck. Liz couldn't be dissuaded from Rouge's side and Rouge didn't try, although she did briefly object when Liz scooped her up into her arms.

“You're still weak and you're going to fucking hurt yourself,” Liz said flatly, holding Rouge bridal-style. “I'm more than strong enough to lug you and be faster than you as I do it. Where're we going, Little Mack? Lead the way.”

Makino did, and she explained things as they walked at a speed bordering on running. As Makino talked, their speed graduated to full running, but neither Liz nor Makino really seemed to notice.

“I was born on this island and returned after we disbanded. I started working in the bar and just... stayed; I own it now. Vice-Admiral Garp visited frequently to see his grandson, Monkey D. Luffy, but there was an incident nearly a year ago that made him move Luffy to Mount Corvo for his safety. That was when I met Garp's other grandson, a boy who introduced himself as Portgas D. Ace.

“I didn't... I didn't know what to do,” Makino admitted, panting heavily. “He looked so much like you, captain, and like Captain Roger, but you were both dead and it just... it didn't make any sense. He's a good boy – a bit angry, but he's still sweet – and he dotes on Luffy – calls him brother.”

Rouge's heart swelled at that thought. Her baby boy had family, had a brother.

“We are going to get Shakky-chan the _best_ wedding present,” Rouge informed her first mate.

Liz snorted. “You think that spidery spy knew?”

“I think she made a very good guess,” Rouge replied, because Shakky surely would have directly informed Rouge if she'd known for certain where her son was. And speaking of information... “Makino-chan, what's been happening on this island?”

Makino looked surprised. “What?”

“Your entire fucking island smells like burnt garbage and your village was on edge,” Liz answered, not at all out of breath even with Rouge in her arms. “What do you mean 'what'? I thought you cook sorts prided yourselves on your sense of smell.”

“Oh,” Makino said, slowing. “Well... that's another story.”

“Do we look uninterested, Little Mack?” Liz demanded, easily matching the younger woman's speed.

“It's not a... nice story.”

In Liz's arms, keeping hold of her cane, Rouge crossed her arms. “I'm not a nice person.”

Makino winced. “It's really not a story for now,” she evaded, “and I really don't know most of it. I wasn't there and no one's told me all of it. Dadan would tell it better than I would. You should ask her.”

"Who the fuck is that?" Liz snapped.

“Curly Dadan. She's hard to describe. You really have to meet her in person,” Makino evaded again. “She... she owns the house that Ace lives in... occasionally.”

Rouge cocked her head. “Do you mean that he only occasionally lives in the house that she owns or that she only occasionally owns the house that he lives in?” she asked with pointed politeness, staring at Makino with her best I'm-the-captain-and-I-sense-bullshit stare.

“Captain,” Makino protested weakly.

“You know something that would piss Rouge off,” Liz guessed. “Garp fucked up, didn't he?”

Makino didn't answer immediately, but Rouge took the sweat on her brow to be a product of running rather than nervousness. They all knew that Liz had hit the nail on the head, and Makino knew that they knew, so it was just a matter of finding another, less-dangerous topic to immediately and awkwardly switch to so they could all briefly pretend differently.

Liz skidded to a stop and Makino confusedly did the same. Rouge gave her first mate a bewildered look as Liz turned her back to Makino, crouched, and said, “Alright, I fucking tried. Mack Junior, hop on, you're too slow and it's driving me fucking insane. And don't think that you're done with those explanations; I want to hear more about this Dadan character.”

 

**{8}**

 

“Garp gave your kid over to fucking mountain bandits,” Liz said dryly. “You gonna kill him yet?”

“I might give it a try,” Rouge answered with razor-sharp lightness, gripping her cane tightly as they stood and watched the Dadan Family greet Makino with no small amount of enthusiasm. “Makino-chan seems popular here.”

“Who doesn't love a pretty lady?”

“Mmm.”

Liz managed another five seconds before she burst out laughing. “I can't fucking believe Garp gave your kid to _criminals_ and he wonders how his kid turned out the way he did. That man makes no fucking sense – no _fucking_ sense – no wonder your shitty moron of a loverboy liked him.”

“Mmm,” Rouge said again, considering how it might be possible to summon the love of her life's ghost so she could scream at Roger alongside Garp. Obviously, dying severely damaged one's judgment of competent childcare.

“Is Dadan here?” Makino was asking of the bandits, having already determined that Ace and Luffy were off somewhere in the godforsaken jungle they'd trekked through to get here. “I need to speak with Dadan as soon as possible.”

“I'm right here, Makino, what is it? Outta my way, you lumps.”

Liz's eyebrows stretched for her hairline; she gave a low whistle. “Garp gave your kid to a _mountain_ of a mountain bandit,” she said. “What a _woman._ ”

Rouge concurred with her first mate. Curly Dadan, as Makino had already stated, was a massive woman with masses of orange hair and arms of a kind that Rouge hadn't seen since _Big_ Mack had been a part of the Blackjack Pirates. She wasn't a beautiful woman, or even a handsome woman, especially with the bandages, bruises, and burns that spoke of a recent injury, and if Rouge had seen her as a stranger on the street and been told Dadan was a mountain bandit, she wouldn't have questioned it. Much.

“Ah, Dadan,” Makino said in obvious relief. “I have someone – two someones – that I want to introduce to you. Over here.”

Makino led the giant woman over to where Rouge and Liz were waiting, and Rouge and Dadan openly studied one another during that time. Dadan was obviously suspicious of Rouge but trusting of Makino as a character reference, and obviously found parts of Rouge recognizable, but either didn't know why or was very good at not reacting to it. Rouge wondered who Dadan thought she might be, given that Garp had probably introduced Ace as an orphan without living blood relation.

Dadan was much taller than she was, Rouge realized, displeased about how she had to looked up to look the other woman in the eye. Rather far up. This was how neck pains happened, surely. Why did people have to be so horribly tall? There should be rules against it.

“Captain, this is Curly Dadan. Ace and Luffy's foster mother,” Makino introduced, blatantly ignoring the way Dadan's eyes widened slightly. “Dadan, this is Baiebleu Liz and Portgas D. Rouge. Rouge is Ace's biological mother.”

Rouge bowed politely as the other woman's expression turned to one of complete shock. “It is nice to meet you, Dadan-san,” she said sincerely. “I hope that my son has not troubled you in my absence and that Garp-san has not troubled you too greatly with his care. Thank you for taking care of him.”

“Uh, you're welcome,” Dadan replied awkwardly, bowing back somewhat stiffly in a way that was more of a nod. “You're... Are you taking him back now?”

“He doesn't know me, but I hope he'll allow it,” Rouge said honestly. “I... I don't know how well he'll take my sudden reappearance after so long. It was assumed that I was permanently dead, you see.”

Dadan was obviously unnerved by Rouge's use of the world 'permanently', but she didn't ask for clarification on it. Instead, Dadan said, “And your... husband... is?”

Rouge was confused for a moment, but then she grinned widely at the bandit. “I'm afraid that I've never had a husband, Dadan-san,” she said, amused at the reaction she supposed would be fairly common once her return was more widely known. Ooh, she'd be having fun with that one. “But my son's father won't be making a reappearance if that's what you're asking.”

Dadan let out a rather obvious sigh of relief, which made Liz snort loudly, although Rouge's first mate thankfully didn't make some comment about the world should be grateful or the like.

A new thought obviously crossed Dadan's face then. “And... what about Luffy?” she asked, glancing at Makino and regarding Rouge with admirable challenging sharpness. “They consider themselves brothers. Ace won't take well to being separated from him, especially... well, Ace won't be happy about it.”

Rouge smiled gratefully at the large woman for her consideration and compassion, which wouldn't usually be expected from someone of her appearance and profession. “Don't worry, Dadan-san, I won't do that to him. I have no plans to go anywhere anything soon and...”

Rouge thought about it for a moment. It had been a bit of a spur of the moment thing to ask Garp to be Ace's grandfather rather than just a guardian, but that technically did make him family now. Garp had made her son his grandson, and, according to Makino, Ace had separately made Luffy his brother. That technically made the Monkeys family twice-over, really.

That had been a part of Rouge's new dream with Roger – the one that had partly irreversibly failed – to make a family. Roger wasn't here anymore, and it was a bit late, but Rouge would hardly turn her back on the possibility of family, even if that family was Monkey D. Garp, Dragon, and Dragon's son.

“Any brother of my son is a son of mine,” Rouge finished firmly. “I look forward to being neighbors with you for the foreseeable future, Dadan-san.”

Dadan's attention, however, was entirely on the first part of that. “You're... you're taking Luffy too?”

Behind Dadan, several bandits stopped bothering to whisper quietly and broke into outright murmuring among themselves. Several of them looked stunned and and were glancing nervously towards their leader, but it was the celebratory and pitying looks on some of them that Rouge found truly suspicious.

“If he and my son are family, and they want to, then yes,” Rouge answered.

“Does... Garp know?” Dadan asked after a few moments.

Rouge's lips twitched, then she beamed up at the massive woman. “No, no, he doesn't,” she answered delightedly. “Nor does he know that I'm not dead. I think, considering that he's apparently blackmailed you into taking them, as Makino-chan tells me, and interrupted your professional work, that they should be taken in by family and he can find out whenever he checks in, don't you think? If he doesn't do it frequently enough to find out about changes in his grandsons' lives, that's really on him.”

Dadan stared at Rouge for a long moment, then broke into an answering grin that changed her whole face. “Sounds fair to me,” she agreed, very brightly. “You're going to stay nearby? On the island?”

“I wasn't planning to when I landed and didn't know where he was,” Rouge admitted, “but it seems a good place to settle and I can't exactly rip my son and his brother from their home, especially when I don't actually have anywhere to kidnap them to. I may take short trips when I'm recovered, but I don't think they'll be the sort of business I'll want to take children on and I'll need trusted people to watch them at home.”

“And what sort of business would that be?” Dadan asked.

Rouge smiled again, one that was a bit too toothy to be anything but unsettling. “Piracy, of course.”

Dadan blinked, then stared, then closed her eyes and sighed. “He gets it from both sides of the family,” she bemoaned. “Of _course_ he gets it from _both_ sides of the family. I'm not even surprised.”

Beside Rouge, Liz snorted and grinned down at her captain. “I like the sound of that, eh, Rouge?”

“Oh yes,” Rouge agreed, delighted with possibilities.

“Do you know when Ace and Luffy will be back here?” Makino asked Dadan.

Dadan opened her eyes. “Unless they've built themselves another fort, then they'll be back with dinner before dark,” she answered, looking at the sky to check the time. It was a couple of hours after noon now. “Looking for them in that damn jungle will take longer than waiting for them to come back.”

Liz looked out towards the trees with interest. “What sort of things are out there? We didn't encounter anything on our way here?”

“That's because you were moving fast enough that anything with more intelligence than a _rock_ kept out of your way,” Rouge told her.

“I didn't hear you complaining.”

Dadan and Makino exchanged a look between them.

“I'm going to find out sooner or later,” Rouge reminded them tiredly, then sharpened her gaze on them both. “And speaking of... I think I'd like that explanation about the foul smell now. How about we have it over tea and get to know each other better? We're going to be good friends, after all, Dadan-san.”

 

**{8}**

 

Well... that explained the foul smell... and Fushia Village's nervousness... and Dadan's wounds.

After a long silence, Rouge carefully placed her cracked teacup down and said flatly, “I'm going to cut off that king's hands and feed him to a Sea King alive.”

“I'll help,” Liz said darkly. “How do you think he likes his shitty castle destroyed? Sliced to pieces or blown to bits? Because Kanone will be _all_ over this once she hears.”

“Hatred for injustice?” Magra, a man with a perpetually concerned expression who'd been introduced as Dadan's second, asked her.

“Hatred for World Nobles,” Liz corrected, “so same thing, more or less.”

Dadan chuckled darkly. “I'll hear that.”

Rouge, meanwhile, was somewhat busy having a mild breakdown. Her son – her fierce, brave baby – had lost a brother not long after she'd returned to the world. Was this some god's sick idea of a joke? Or making balance for her victory? A life for a life? No, surely not. The world was cruel enough to concoct such a thing without the interference of gods, but... still...

“Captain?” Makino asked softly.

“Ah, Makino-chan, it's nothing,” Rouge assumed her, voice somewhat shaky, ignoring the look Liz gave her that frankly said the first mate could tell that it was very much not nothing. “I was merely thinking about something unpleasant.”

“Aren't we all?” Dadan said, standing to gather a bottle of sake and cups for the six of them – Rouge, Liz, Dadan, Makino, Magra, and a small man named Dogra who'd solemnly and valiantly described the boy's cruel and needless death to them through tears. They waited in silence as she poured.

Once, Dadan was done, Liz lifted her cup and said clearly, “To Sabo.”

“To Sabo,” they echoed, and they drank.

 _If someone has made you pay for my life with yours,_ Rouge promised silently, _I will find out._

 

**{8}**

 

Despite the melancholy mood that the explanation of recent events left them with, their small group's conservation was plentiful and joyful. Rouge wanted to know absolutely everything there was to know about her son, the younger son she'd unexpectedly gained, and the last son that she'd almost had. The adventures of Ace, Sabo, and Luffy were as heartwarming as they were hilarious.

And it obvious to anyone who looked that distraction was the only thing keeping Rouge in her seat and from panicking. As the sun got lower in the sky, Rouge couldn't help but become nervous and jittery, even fully involved in captivating conversation.

Ace was quickly revealed to be an angry, stubborn, impolite, grumpy, and generally ungrateful brat of a child by the Dadan Family. The bandits then remembered who they were speaking to and looked like they were about to faint, but Rouge just laughed at them, because there was obvious fondness in their tone. She'd hardly been the most pleasant and bearable of children herself, and beckoned for them to continue telling her about her little monster of a child.

It was collectively agreed that Ace had gotten a lot better with the appearances of Sabo and Luffy. He was a loving brother, even if he didn't really know how to be and had gotten off to a truly terrible start with Luffy. He was still apparently an angry, reckless brat with more strength than sense, but he'd generally become more considerate and compassionate. At least slightly.

Ace and Luffy, and Sabo before his death, apparently had dreams of being pirates. Liz had laughed until she'd given herself a cramp at that, Makino had just smiled into her teacup, and Rouge sighed at the both of them. Fate had such a sense of humor.

She could only imagine Garp's reaction to discovering that both of his grandsons wanted to become pirates. Oh, that _poor_ marine. Hah!

Rouge herself didn't know how to react. She loved her lifestyle, but it was a very dangerous one, especially for children of legacies. Yet the boys had obviously faced real danger, opposition, pain, and suffering worthy of any pirate on the Blues and still dreamed of being pirates. That spoke of something that couldn't be stopped, something that might even be wrong to stop, and Rouge was hardly about to hypocritically tell anyone not to be a pirate.

Actually, mostly she just wanted to strangle Garp for not being here.

Dadan's description of Ace's feelings on his father worried Rouge some. He was obviously suffering from Roger's reputation and the World Government's rumor-mongering, and it didn't seem like anyone had truly tried to talk him through it. It was too complicated a subject for a child to understand with limited misinformation and without support: the morals and morality of the most infamous man in the world.

Of course Ace had a grudge with Roger's exploits unintentionally having made his life incredibly difficult; an orphaned boy with an absentee grandfather was entitled to some discontent and grudges, especially with his current living situation. Rouge fully expected her son to be upset with her for dying and leaving him alone.

It disappointed her a little that no one knew Ace's opinion on her, and that Garp had never spoken of her. Well, honestly, it disappointed her a _lot_ that she didn't seem to have been mentioned at all. It probably wouldn't be the wisest to disclose the whole Redblack Jack thing to a young boy, but Rouge would have thought that she'd get... well, _something._ Anything, really.

Hopefully, Garp had simply spoken to Ace of her in private.

The entire room had noticed Rouge's clear disappointment and Liz had quickly shifted the conversation after to Luffy, asking for more information on the younger brother if the brats came as a package deal. While the Dadan Family had already told them most of what they knew of Luffy and slowly moved off to other duties and interests, Makino knew plenty, and was soon regaling Rouge and Liz with the story of how Shanks had given Luffy his hat and earned the boy's eternal worship.

“I can't believe he lost his fucking arm,” Liz said after the story was over. “That just makes his rising rep even scarier, if the boy's going up against the biggest fucking fish in the Blues without his favored sword-arm. I remember him being a leftie.”

“He's an adaptable boy from an adaptable crew,” Rouge said optimistically. “I'm sure he's fine.”

“Yeah, probably,” Liz agreed, then she looked over at Makino with a salacious grin, making her purple eyebrows dance so suggestively that it was almost obscene. “So, you and Redhair, huh?”

Makino sputtered and fumbled with her teacup. “No! No, no, no!” she instead immediately and desperately. “There's no 'me and Shanks'!”

“About time,” Liz continued, expertly ignoring Makino's objections. “Damn, he used to follow you around like a hopeful puppy. Didn't help your anti-friendship stance that you kept actually feeding him - and that weird friend of his. Does he know about your time with the Blackjacks?”

Makino froze, then quietly admitted, “Yes. I'm so sorry, captain; I didn't say anything about it! But he just suddenly asked me if I was Mack and I didn't know what to say!”

“Makino-chan, it's fine,” Rouge assured her. “Shanks-kun is trustworthy and he already knew that there were women in the Blackjack Pirates.” Rouge deftly ignored Liz's snickering at this statement and tried not to think about why Shanks knew because that really didn't bear thinking about. “I'm sure he promised not to tell anyone, right?”

“Yes.”

“Then it's fine,” Rouge said decisively, watching Makino relax before saying with a smile, “But, you and Shanks-kun, huh?”

Makino blushed. “There's _no_ 'me and Shanks'!”

Liz and Rouge exchanged a look. Rouge remembered countless amounts of extremely awkward teenager flirting that suggested otherwise – Shanks had been a hopeless, gangly, lovestruck mess and Makino had been an overwhelmed, skinny, in-denial disaster. Liz and Rouge were hardly about to play matchmaker, but they couldn't let Makino go about her business without getting in some payback for having to watch that painful, hilarious, adolescent catastrophe. Besides, Rouge had to get her parenting practice in where she could, and embarrassment was surely a crucial part of things.

“WE'RE HOOOOOOOME!” someone shouted then, sounding young and probably male.

“We brought food!” another voice added, slightly lower and not at all as excited. “Dadan? Magra?” A boy of about ten years walked through the door – bruised, bandaged, and slightly blood-spattered – and looked about the room before setting on them. “Do- Makino?”

Makino didn't say anything, too busy paling and looking at Rouge.

Rouge was having trouble breathing. It was just like seeing Liz and Grieffe again, like someone had tied her heart and lungs in a knot, only they weren't quite coming undone this time. She could feel tear welling up in her eyes too, because she recognized this stranger.

He looked so much like Roger, but with just enough touches of her to be very different. He had his father's hair color, but it curled at the ends like hers did. He had his father's eye color as well, but the shape was hers. And there were the makings of Roger's build in those skinny shoulders and face, but all of it was covered in freckles, just like her. He'd grown so much.

She could look at him for forever and a day, but she couldn't just stare forever.

“Oh.. hello,” Rouge said softly. “...Aren't you _beau_ tiful.”

Ace stared at her, somewhere between disbelieving and unimpressed.

“Who the hell are you?”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Congrats to anyone who called it with Makino.
> 
> EDIT: I've added some new art to the collection (next fic in the series)! Go check it out!


	9. Hello, Sunshine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rouge introduces herself and explains her absence to her skeptical son.   
> Meanwhile, Liz meets the next King of the Pirates. At least he's cuter than the last one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Winter Solstice! Just a bit more darkness before it starts getting brighter. 
> 
> Just this chapter, which has its ups and down.
> 
> I'm traveling, so half of this was written on my phone. First time trying that, but I think it turned out mostly fine. I'll give it a rewrite before the next chapter.

 

“Ah,” Rouge managed, then cleared her throat and carefully said, “My name is Portgas D. Rouge...”

Ace's eyes widened.

“...and I am your mother,” Rouge finished cautiously. “I'm sorry I couldn't be here earlier.”

 

**{9}**

 

The kid looked like someone had turned the world on its head and then dropped it on him. His freckles stood out on his face even more than before, and Liz wouldn't be holding that reaction against him. It wasn't every day that the mother you'd never met before came back from the dead after ten years of absence. He'd understandably gone completely stiff and, seriously, stunned didn't even fucking begin to cover his expression because it was changing too fast.

Shocked. Confused. Suspicious. Angry. Surprised. And then back to suspicious again.

With that last expression, he looked even more like a young Rouge than he already did with that face and the unfortunate amount of spots. He looked a lot like Roger too, actually, with the same sort of scowl to his brow and jut to his chin. Liz supposed that only made sense – kids were supposed to be a mixture of their parents – of course the tiny, angry-looking brat would manage to be a miniature mix of Rouge and Roger's features.

Rouge's expression was stuck on one of wary hopefulness, restrained yet optimistic, but Liz caught the trembling in her captain white-knuckled hands. Her freckles were standing out on her skin too, and the shaking was getting worse with each second that the kid didn't say anything.

“AAAAAAACE! HURRY UP! I'M HUUUUNGRY!”

Another boy bounced into the room, smaller than Rouge's son and with a similar mop of hair though different facial features. He couldn't be anyone but Garp's grandson – Monkey D. Lucy...? No, Luffy. And even though he really did look like a much younger, much smaller Garp, Liz could immediately see what Shakky meant by Redhair being reminded of his captain. The boy had that bright, moronic aura and...

He had the hat.

Shanks had really given the boy _that fucking hat._

“Aaaace,” the boy whined, grabbing at his adopted brother's arm. “What's going on?” He turned wide eyes over the rest of the room, brow furrowing in adorable confusion as he laid eyes on Rouge and Liz, then said bluntly, “Who're you?”

Then he spotted Little Mack and his face lit up like the sun. “MAKINO! You're back!” He launched himself at the woman, babbling something about crocodiles and bears and lunch, excited in the way only seven-year-olds could be.

Liz snorted softly and intercepted before he bowled the cook-turned-bar-owner over, snatching him up by the back of his shirt. She moved to her feet, grabbed him, and threw him over her shoulder all in a fluid motion. There was no way Rouge and the angry-looking brat could have the necessary conversation with this bundle of joy bouncing off the walls.

The angry-looking brat was suddenly wielding his long pipe in front of him, in a pretty decent ready-stance and glaring hatefully at Liz, who just raised an eyebrow at him. Huh, good reflexes. And damn if he didn't look even more like his parents now, both of them at their most deadly, bristling with protective anger and ready to fight for his little brother, who was squirming confusedly and uselessly over Liz's shoulder, demanding loudly to be put down and told what was going on.

“Put him _down,_ ” the brat ordered coldly.

Liz was so game to test big brother, to see if he really had that special fight in him that Makino and the bandits had been talking up. She wanted to see if he had the fire that his parents had in spades, but...

“ _Liz,_ ” Rouge said warningly.

...this was hardly the time or the place.

“Relax, kids,” Liz drawled, stepping forward and ignoring the pipe the brat tried to stick in her face. “I'm just gonna step right outside with this bouncing bundle so _you -_ ” She forcefully ruffled the adorable, angry-looking brat's hair, admiring the way he tried to slap her off – boy had his parents' strength at least. “- can have the talk you need to have with your old lady.”

“Ace,” Makino said gently, “it's alright.”

“Listen to the pretty lady, brat,” Liz agreed. “She knows what's up.”

And then she brushed past the angry-looking brat with ease, ripping his pipe from his hands as she went. Because Liz was pretty sure that family discussions weren't supposed to involve brawling and as first mate, it was her duty to remove potential dangers to her captain. Or at least make sure that her kid didn't try to hit her in the face with a pipe.

As much as Liz wanted to sit by Rouge's side and do protection in person, both physically and emotionally, this initial meeting seemed like something that her captain had to do by herself. Especially if Rouge wanted to get respect from the angry-looking brat, who apparently had an amazing amount of issues for his age. Hell, Liz was pretty sure that even she hadn't been that bad.

Also, Liz had just _barely_ managed not to burst out laughing at his first words to his mother. If things continued along a similar path of the hilarious and tragic shipwreck kind, Liz's further presence would probably only damage things for Rouge.

That had been fucking _priceless._

 

**{9}**

 

Her son watched Liz go, eyes wide and hands open, then turned back towards her. His stunned look became tinged with suspicion again and it hurt Rouge's heart to have him look at her like that, even and especially because it was well-deserved.

She wouldn't trust her at first glance either.

“Please... won't you sit?” Rouge offered carefully after the silence strained too far. “I know I have... much to explain to you, and that you probably have many questions that deserve answers.”

Warily, Ace stepped into the room and sat across from her at the low table. He sat awkwardly, putting himself into a pose that mimicked Makino's polite posture, and held his fists clenched in his lap. But he didn't stare down at them; he didn't break eye-contact even once.

Makino silently rose to her feet then. “I'll leave you two to talk,” she said softly, giving Ace a reassuring smile before she left the room, going into the house instead of after Liz and Dragon's son.

There was another strained silence between them then. Rouge wanted dearly to break it, but her son looked so hard-hearted and blank, unlike everything she had heard about him, and she didn't quite know where to begin. What had he been told of her? Her past as Redblack Jack? Her death as Garp had known it? Or perhaps even nothing at all...?

And how was she even to begin to apologize for ten years of absence?

“...Where've you been?”

It was quiet, and not quite cold exactly, but rather heavy. Filled with too much to be clear.

“Dead,” Rouge told him softly. “That was not a lie.”

“...Dead,” Ace echoed dully.

Rouge nodded. “When I died, I had a plan to come back,” she summarized, not sure how much Garp had told him of circumstances surrounding his birth. Probably very little, knowing Garp. “I didn't tell anyone because I wasn't sure that it would work. The good is that it did; the bad is that it took... longer than I thought to come back.”

Ace just looked confused now, with an edge of distress that Rouge hadn't expected. He looked like this was a dream he didn't know how to wake up from, like he couldn't believe this was real and wanted to get back to where things made sense.

“How?” he demanded. “How do you come back from the _dead?”_

“...That is a story that goes back to when I was pregnant with you,” Rouge replied as gently as she could, wanting so very desperately to reach out and comfort him, but painfully aware how unwelcome her touch would be. “How much do you know about me? About my past?”

Ace's confusion took on a more thoughtful look now. “You carried me for twenty months to avoid the Marines,” he answered, looking slightly ill as he stared down at his clenched fists, “and after I was born, you named me... and then died from the strain.”

Rouge waited for more, but Ace only looked at her expectantly when the silence lasted too long.

“That's _it_?” she finally said, unintentionally loud.

Ace nodded warily.

Rouge had never been so offended in all her life. She felt anger of a kind that had been reserved for the worst of the world and that had been known to reduce palaces to pieces, because _how dare_ she become such a... a...  _footnote_ to her child? Rouge had sacrificed _everything_ to let him live, and Garp could barely be bothered to tell him her name? She was so offended that she momentarily completely forgot about making a good impression on her son and basically lost it.

“Nearly _twenty_ years of daring deeds and legendary feats, and Garp _reduced_ me to faceless woman only there to die in _childbirth_?!” She was Redblack Jack, the World's Greatest Thief and leader of the infamous Blackjack Pirates! And not even a mention of that? “I'm going to hold his head underwater until fish eat his face off! How _dare_ he?!”

But it was also more than just offense that Garp had completely ignored everything Rouge had worked so hard for – ignoring the legacy that should have been _not far behind_ her Roger's and those of pirates like Shakky and Newgate. Maybe Garp had been saving that for when Ace was older, probably under some bizarre impression that having a cross-dressing pirate for a mother would somehow be difficult for a young boy to understand or something equally idiotic. Garp was hardly someone who bothered much with sex or gender presentation beyond _marine_ , so maybe the man just didn't know how to explain that and was putting it off for as long as he could.

But... that was really it? Ace didn't know a single thing about her besides that? Garp could have easily explained some of her character or adapted a few stories, but... he hadn't? Rouge hadn't been as much as an arch-nemesis foe to Garp as Roger had, but she had still thought the marine respected her about as much, even she was a thief while Roger had been the warrior. She'd been so focused on how he would honor Roger's memory instead of deriding it, she had never even paused to consider that he might not honor hers because it had gone without saying and thought for her.

She was confused and angry and hurt, but she remembered where she was and told herself that this was not her place or time to be those things. Rouge returned her fists to her lap and nervously studied Ace's wide-eyed face. This was her baby's time and place, not hers.

Thankfully, she hadn't scared him off as suddenly switching from benevolent smiles to vengeful murder usually did with people. Most people found what was beneath Rouge's faces of good humor and happy kindness to be unnerving or even terrifying. But in all strange honesty, Ace actually looked more reluctantly impressed than anything else. It was odd, yes, but Rouge took it as a... potentially good sign. 

Rouge cleared her throat. “Is... is that really it?”

Ace looked considering for a moment, but then he nodded with a sorry shrug.

“Oh,” Rouge said, deflating fully.

So that was that, then. A boatload of overheard stories and corresponding issues for Roger, and nothing but a mention and a whole lot of nothing for her. Rouge knew she could be a bit egotistical sometimes but... that really, really hurt.

“Well,” she said, pushing past the aches, “I suppose the first thing you need to know is that I'm a pirate and a thief.” She thought about it, then corrected herself since apparently _no one_ else was going to tell him how amazing she was. “A very _good_ pirate and a _very_ good thief – the best of thieves, really.”

Ace's eyes widened again, and there was a touch of awe to his features before suspicion reemerged. He looked her over skeptically, lingering on her thin arms and sundress and lack of weapons or anything even remotely pirate-y. Rouge didn't look much like a pirate, she'd agree, especially at the moment, but that apparent innocence was an advantage that Rouge wasted no time in exploiting when she was on the Blues.

“A pirate?” Ace said disbelievingly.

Rouge smiled. “I used a disguise and another name, so I could sneak around without getting caught, but yes, I'm a pirate. It's how I met your father.” Ace's face darkened here, so Rouge continued, “And it's why I was being chased by marines – not because of you; they didn't know about you – they wanted me dead because I'm dangerous all on my lonesome.”

“I thought... I thought the Marines were trying to stop the child of the De... of Gold Roger from being born,” Ace said, bewildered and mistrustful, hastily skipping over his slip of the tongue.

Rouge still caught what he'd almost said just fine though, and she silently damned the whole World Government and their petty but clever rumor-mongering and bloody, twisted justice.

“Yes,” Rouge allowed, “but your existence was only a rumor. I was being chased for my own crimes, and that was when I was approached by someone who had heard how good I was at stealing things. They offered me help.”

“Who?”

“Her name is Cee, and I believe she's a goddess. If I agreed to steal something for her from another god, I would have the chance to steal something to save you,” Rouge told him, the world coming slightly easier off her tongue now that she'd already explained this to Liz and Grieffe. “I stole a jar of Time and used it to carry you for fifteen more months.”

“I thought... I was told that it was sheer strength of will,” Ace said, looking dazed and even more disbelieving at the sudden appearance of gods and jars of Time. He had that heaviness to his voice again, sharply edged with even greater distress than before, which distressed Rouge herself.

Maybe this was too much truth to be telling to a boy all at once?

“It may have seemed that way to Garp-san, because I was the only one who knew,” Rouge explained, keeping her hands in her lap to stop herself from reaching out and touching him, “but it wasn't. It was the use of Time that put the strain on my body. After you were born, and I died, I was brought before the god I stole from, where I challenge-”

“STOP IT!”

Rouge did, and stared at her son, who was glaring at the floor between them after his yelled interruption. Ace's fists were still white-knuckled in his own lap, but his face was red with anger and his eyes lined with tears under his scowl.

“Ace...” Rouge said with gentle desperation, deeply scared that she had greatly upset her son. “Are you alright?”

“ _No,_ ” he immediately growled out. “You're _lying_ to me!” He brought his eyes up to glare at her, ferocious and furious. “Why are you _lying_ to me?”

Rouge blinked, eyes beginning to water at the sudden surge of emotion. “Ace, I'm not-”

“You _are!_ ” he shouted, launching backwards as Rouge reached out towards him, glaring at her outstretched hand until she took it back. “Do you think I'd _believe_ that?!” he demanded. “That you've just been... been... busy dealing with _gods?!”_

“Ace-”

“What kind of a lie even _is_ that? Who would believe that? _Who_ would _believe_ that?!” Ace demanded incredulously of her, getting slowly to his feet and backing away, and a horrified look crossed his face. “You're lying about where you've been... How do I even know you're not lying about who you are?!”

Rouge gasped painfully at that before she could stop herself. If her heart hadn't already felt like it was breaking into pieces, this would have cleanly shattered it. Her baby boy – who was no longer a baby, but a person who'd lived and grown entirely without her presence in his life – didn't believe she was his mother. And she couldn't blame him for it.

“Ace,” she began again.

“No, no! I don't want to listen to you!” the boy said vehemently, backing farther away, no longer even looking at her. “I don't want to be _lied_ to b-”

Rouge took a deep breath. **“Ace,”** she commanded, willing his full attention.

Her son's knees buckled slightly, but he admirably stood firm, and he stared at her with wide, slightly terrified eyes. It hurt Rouge to have him look at her like that, but she wasn't sorry for it as she did it. She wondered at the mixed look of recognition and realization on his face.

“ **I am not lying,”** Rouge informed him firmly, ignoring the wetness in her eyes. **“My name is Portgas D. Rouge and I am your mother.”**

Then she let her will ebb away and the air in the room lost its heaviness. With the intense pressure removed, Ace straightened to his full height, skinny shoulders as broad as he could make them. He glared at her, guarded and abhorring, and took a decisive, rebellious step backwards.

“But it is a difficult if not impossible story to believe,” Rouge said quietly, her voice beginning to water as well. “And I am a stranger to you. Go and think on it, talk to someone, and I will... I will see you... another time. I have made you wait... and I can wait too.”

Ace gave her one last, horrified look, and then bolted.

 

**{9}**

 

“PUT ME DOWN!”

“Ugh.”

It hadn't been twenty steps out the door and Liz already couldn't handle anymore high-pitched yelling in her ear. Damn kid. Done with the noise, Liz grabbed one of the uselessly kicking legs and pulled the boy from her shoulder, dangling him in front of her by the leg and having to wait a moment for him to stop struggling and actually look at her.

Well, he glared at her, but Liz wasn't scared by that. She wasn't scared by this boy's daddy or even his daddy's daddy, so she just glared right on back at the glowering, fuming boy. Who had even _let_ Garp and Dragon have kiddos, anyway?

“WHO ARE YOU?” he demanded. “LET ME GO!”

Liz dodged taking a sandal to the chin and shook him a bit – only a bit. “Look, would you stop flailing so I _can_ put your butt down without getting kicked in the head?”

The boy stopped struggling wildly, but he didn't stop glaring at her, and crossed his arms expectantly. Liz raised an eyebrow at him, making a show of showing him her free hand before carefully turning him right-side up and then placing him on the ground. He was still glaring at her with his arms crossed when she stepped back, but Liz just smirked at him because that was pouting if she'd ever seen it.

She crouched down and held out a hand. “I'm Baiebleu Eliza – everybody calls me Liz. I'm the first mate aboard the House Royale.”

The boy looked at her hand, almost like he was considering biting it – holy fuck, Liz hoped not – but in the end stuck his hand out – the wrong one – to shake. Liz didn't call him on it and just used her larger hand to grab the smaller hand and shook. Once that was over with, the boy used his hand to stick a finger up his nose, which made Liz recoil in surprise before she could stop herself.

Ugh, children.

“I'm Monkey D. Luffy!” he announced, and Liz did her best not to look at the finger when he removed it. The boy then tilted his head to the side questioningly. “First mate? Are you a sailor?”

Liz grinned, the one with too many teeth that tended to frighten people. “Better. I'm a pirate.”

The boy lit up like the sun again and excitedly jabbed a thumb into his own chest. “I'm going to be _King_ of the Pirates!” he declared, with the exact same certainty that that moron Roger used to have and the exact sort of beaming smile Rouge gave before she was about to set something on fire for fun.

If this boy didn't look so much like Garp and the angry-looking brat didn't look so much like his parents, then Liz might think that they'd had the wrong kid.

“Pirate King, eh?” Liz said indulgently, reaching out to rub a thumb over the brim of the damn hat that might as well have been a crown. “I knew the last Pirate King. Did you know that you've got his hat?”

Luffy's little hands flew up to grasp his precious hat. “No, this is _Shanks'_ hat!”

“Yeah, but before it was Shanks', it was Roger's,” Liz explained. “Young Redhair must like you a lot to give it to you. I bet he's got a lot of faith in you.”

“Of course he does! I'm gonna be the King of the Pirates!” Luffy declared again, then he seemed to realized something and stared up at her with awe. “You know Shanks?”

“Hah! Know him? I used to teach that boy to use a sword,” Liz said proudly, recalling those times where she'd occupied herself around the Merry Band of Morons by sparring with Rayleigh or beating the 'Dark King's' proteges into the ground. “Our captains were allies. Haven't seen him in awhile, though.”

Liz was about to ask the boy how Shanks was doing, but she'd been keeping up with most of Shanks' admittedly impressive campaigns and been thoroughly caught up on his time on Dawn Island by Little Mack. Frankly, Liz didn't really want to hear anything more on the Redhair brat today, and she also suddenly remembered that young Shanks had pretty recently lost his favored sword-arm because of the boy in front of her.

Maybe not a great subject.

“So how about you show me some cool moves and I'll see if I can teach you some stuff like I taught young Shanks, huh?” Liz offered, falling back on her favorite option of teaching young people how to properly hit stuff. They usually loved that shit and Liz was good at it.

If Luffy's smile was any indication, her shot struck true, and if that smile got any wider, it would take over his face. “YEAAH! COME ON! WATCH THIS!” Yep, instant distraction.

The boy took a few bounding steps away, pointed himself towards the trees, and drew back a fist. Liz watched with her eyebrows raised, curious to see what the shorty considered a cool move (and what Devil Fruit he had since Little Mack hadn't said). Little kids with big dreams came up with the most hilarious attacks – the boy's hero was proof enough of that, Liz had enough embarrassing stories about Shanks to _end_ the man.

“GOMU GOMU NO PISTOL!” the boy shouted at the top of his lungs, and threw his fist forward. Calling it a punch would be an insult to punches everywhere, because there was no proper form to it at all.

Liz waited for the kid to fall on his ass, but, instead, watched Luffy's arm stretch to an impossible length at a fairly impressive speed. It stretched about five times longer than his regular arm, then stopped and snapped back like a rubber band. The boy, with his shitty stance and oh-no-not-again expression, was comically spun about by the backlash before he fell on his ass with a soft thump.

Liz couldn't help it and burst into laughter. That was sheer ridiculousness like she hadn't seen since Rouge in all her dumbass teenage glory.

The boy awkwardly and angrily got to his feet, face flushing red in embarrassment. His dusty fists were clenched and Liz managed to control herself, experience managing swabbies having taught her the pitfalls of silly younglings.

“That was awesome, kid!” Liz told him honestly, pushing down another few chuckles at the instant memory replay. “Obviously no one's taught you how to punch, but that's gonna be real cool with some practice. You've got a Devil Fruit, don't you? Which one?”

It took the boy a moment to process her words, or believe them at least, but then Luffy's face lit with another one of those enormous smiles. He was clearly proud, grinning like that, and obviously delighted at unexpected support and encouragement.

“The Gomu Gomu no Mi!” he answered, bounding up to her and tugging the side of his mouth with a hand, stretching it past regular human limits. “I'mb a Wubbah Mahn!”

“Neat,” Liz said, smiling.

Luffy let his cheek go and it slapped against his teeth, interrupting whatever he'd been about to say. “Ow,” he said, rubbing his cheek.

Liz didn't often have the issue of having to resist the urge to coo, but she was having it now. Forget the familiar resemblance to Garp and the eerie resemblance to Roger, all Liz could see right now was a tiny Rouge. There was still hope for this kid not to turn out quite so ugh as those dumbasses.

“I got it from Shanks!” the boy continued happily. “It was his treasure but I thought it was dessert so I ate it! It tasted reaaaally bad and he really mad for a bit, and now I can't even learn to swim, but it's still really cool-!”

“Wait, you... accidentally stole a Devil Fruit from the Redhair brat?” Liz asked, more because she needed to hear that fucking beautiful statement again than for clarification. Little Mack hadn't mentioned that part. “What was he _doing_ at the time?”

Luffy's head tilted to the side. “Talkin' to Makino,” he answered. “I didn't know it was treasure! And Shanks said I could keep it after!”

Of fucking course he did. Devil Fruit powers were transferred with the first bite, so it wasn't like the brat could have somehow gotten the fruit back. And hot damn, Liz was going to be talking to Little Mack about this 'talking'. There was _so_ much teasing potential – this was the shit that Liz's fucking dreams were made of.

Liz waved off the boy's protests and reached under his hat to ruffle his hair. “Nice one. Already stealing from other pirates, you're gonna be a hell of a pirate, kid.”

Luffy beamed, but still wriggled away from her hand, clutching his precious hat tight to his head. Then his smile dropped as he rubbed the edges thoughtfully.

“Did my hat really belong to _the_ Pirate King?” he asked.

 _The great moron himself,_ Liz thought, before saying, “Yep. Old Gold Roger, from him to Shanks to you. It's a very important hat.”

“...Yeah,” Luffy agreed, fingers still worrying over the edges. Then he asked quietly, “Why didn't Shanks tell me?”

Oh fuck.

Liz cocked her head, then shrugged. “I dunno, kid. Maybe he wanted you to find out on your own. Maybe he didn't want to talk about where he got the hat. Maybe he was saving the story for later. You can ask him the next time you see him.”

“But... the next time I see him, I'm supposed to give it back... as... as... King of the Pirates,” Luffy revealed, bottom lip quivering slightly. “And that's not gonna be for a really long time.”

That quiet admission settled it, Liz would never understand men for as long as she lived. Never had, never would, and never even wanted to try. As Kanone was fond of saying: the male gender was an overdramatic mess of incomprehensible, overcompensating nonsense.

“Well then I'll ask him for you,” Liz offered. “And who owns it now is the important thing. One day there could be kid just like you being told he has Pirate King Luffy's old straw hat.”

Luffy visibly thought this over, then grinned again, almost shyly.

“Exactly,” Liz told him, grinning back, “but you gotta make yourself a Pirate King to begin with. So let's see if I can teach you how to punch and make that pistol as cool as it should be.”

 

**{9}**

 

He didn't believe her. She'd let her nervousness get the better of her until her story became a babbling, actually incredible lie to him. So anxious to explain everything about her absence, she'd said too much too fast and it hadn't rung true.

She'd been able to tell Liz and Grieffe mostly calmly and clearly, but they weren't strangers to each other. Liz and Grieffe knew her better than anyone, alive or dead; they could spot all her lies and they trusted her words, even when she started speaking of gods and goddesses. And they had both seen strange things, legendary and impossible things, enough not to discount tall tales immediately.

Rouge had spent so much effort trying to stop herself from falling apart, from crying all over her stranger of a son for all the things that had happened to the both of them, and her story had fallen apart instead. She'd ended up ruining things anyway.

And, on top of things, it was completely understandable that he hadn't believed her. More than that, really, it was _sensible._

If some strange woman appeared, claiming relation and to have come back from the dead by ways of gods and spirits, Rouge would tell her son to get the hell away. Someone like that was obviously up to no good. It was just Rouge's luck that that strange woman was her and no wonder that Ace had run.

The use of Haki had been so stupid. And wrong. Rouge had mindlessly, desperately wanted him to stop, to listen, and in their mutual distress had forgotten there was a different between being a parent and being a captain. She'd only succeeded in scaring him and making herself completely untrustworthy, forcing her will on his.

She didn't know how to be a mother. Right now, she didn't think she knew how to be much of a person either. She felt like scum.

“Little Mack told me that you were brooding over something fucking stupid. Since that's actually a first mate's worst fucking nightmare, I thought I'd do my job and fix your shit.”

Rouge huffed weakly. “Somehow I doubt that Makino-chan said it like that.”

“Whatever, same thing,” Liz said carelessly, dropping down next to her captain. “I read between the lines. How'd it go?”

Rouge handed over the bottle of sake they'd used to toast Sabo, which had been at least still half-full earlier. Liz stared at it for a moment, took it, weighed it, and then turned it upside down. Nothing came out.

“That shit, huh?” Liz asked wryly.

“Worse. He didn't believe me. About anything.”

“Oh.”

“He didn't even know I was a pirate. Garp-san only told him that I carried him for twenty months through sheer will and then died giving birth to him.”

“...That's _it_?” Liz demanded incredulously, eyes wide behind her sunglasses. Then she paused and repeated, “Sheer will? Sheer fucking will? I'm not fucking expert on reproduction, but I'm pretty damn sure no damn body works like that at all. At _all._ ”

“At all,” Rouge echoed, “but Garp-san worked off the information he had... and he's never been the brightest. It was... fine until I tried to explain the truth and he demanded to know why I was lying.”

Liz was silent at first, then snorted. “At least your brat's got sense then,” she said, almost fondly. “Suspicious little bastard.”

Rouge put her head in hands and leaned into Liz's side as her first mate put an arm around her. “He hates me and doesn't believe a word out of my mouth. Why couldn't he be more like his father, Liz?”

“Because life doesn't fucking work that way. Are you gonna cry now?”

“I already cried my eyes out after he left,” Rouge admitted. “I sent Makino out after him and had a sob. How did things go with the younger one?”

“Told him where his hat came from and taught him how to throw a proper punch. Turns out he's got the Gomu Gomu no Mi, which'll be fucking fun to deal with when he's good with it. He's a handful, but a good kid.”

“Do you want to handle the other one too?” Rouge asked with false hopefulness and falser cheer. She wouldn't really ask that of her first mate; Ace was her problem.

Liz snorted. “Hell no.”

“But you're sooo good with kids, Liz.”

“Still hell no. You'll learn. Don't worry about shit, Rouge; he'll believe you eventually,” Liz said firmly. “Someone will talk your angry brat around.”

 


	10. My Old Lady

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Beware mothers. They're dangerous creatures.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Valentine's Day!

 

At first, it was not something an insensitive or inattentive person would have noticed, not beyond dismissing it as nothing out of the ordinary. No, it was far too subtle for that. But Kanone Grieffe was nothing if not sensitive to subtle scents and presences, and vigilant enough to think something of it. She was not, by nature, an unguarded person, though she was a curious one, and she had seen far too much to dismiss anything without some investigation.

Her nose itched with a sudden burst of brine on the wind, more than there should have been even with the breeze picking up. The air reeked of salt and fish, ridiculously strong even on the edge of the ocean. The growing winds were shifting far too quickly for the quiet waters of East Blue.

It was the perfect sea wind for a ship coming in to Dawn Island, blowing inland fast and steady. It seemed strange and out-of-place that there was nothing sailing on it – no foreign presence, no shape on the horizon. The expanse of the waves showed no one, even as far as Grieffe stretched her impressive sense, but she _knew_ there should have been something there. A wind like that should have something riding on it, just as that ocean stench should have belonged to something, for their suddenness if nothing else.

The waves were louder, slapping hard against the sides of their ship, rising higher than before. An unlikely number of seabirds were gathering, squawking loudly. House Royale's tied sails struggled fiercely, as though looking to flap and billow under the revived wind. Bits and pieces of the world seemed to be tossing and turning in excitement.

And yet the only presence was the familiar echo and call of the ocean's voice, just... louder.

 _Closer,_ if Grieffe had to put a word to it.

She walked over to the side of the ship and took reassuring hold of House Royale's railing, then looked cautiously over the side. A less controlled woman would have stumbled back at what Grieffe saw. The ocean as it was now was like nothing she had ever seen before, even with all the horrors and wonders she'd witnessed over her adventurous years.

Fish... fish of seemingly every possible shape and size, had suddenly gathered at the shores of Dawn Island. An incredible, impossible amount of fish, of every color and pattern imaginable. The space between two fish, upon inspection by her sharp sense, was revealed each time to be yet another fish. Sometimes more.

They slapped and struggled against each other, thrashing their tails violently and snapping hungrily for space. Some were even devouring one another, the giants swallowing many small ones whole. The fish were restless, agitated, fighting violently for room that wasn't there as the waves rolled.

And the rolling waves were bright and blue in a way that Grieffe had not seen in years. They gleamed under the sun, glinting and sparkling sharply as they broke and smashed and swirled.

“What is it?” Rita asked behind her.

“Trouble,” Grieffe answered, watching the thick, writhing sea of fish just under the surface, speaking with all the calmness that she did not feel. “Keep your weapons close.”

 

**{10}**

 

Ace didn't know how to have a mother.

But that didn't matter because he didn't want one. Mothers, as far as he knew, were terrible things that talked in shrill voices and tried to control your entire life for their own gain. That's what Sabo had said, at least, and Sabo had actually had a mother, so he'd known what he was talking about.

Ace shook his head to get thoughts of his dead brother out of his head. He didn't want to think about Sabo right now, not on top of everything else.

Except... it was hard not to. Because Sabo would have known what to make of everything. Sabo had had parents and probably known several other mothers, and was calm when Ace wasn't and a good listener and came up with smart ideas. Ace really, really needed his other brother right now, because Sabo would have known what to do and Ace couldn't really think straight by himself at the moment.

He had a mother. A _mother!_

Ace didn't know how to have a mother – like, a _real_ mother. He'd been just fine without one, with only the story of how she died for him (he killed her) and her name (which he stole because his bastard father's name was pretty much a target). He didn't know at all what to do with a real, actual person in front of him!

Especially when she was making weird claims and telling weirder lies, like some crazy person who'd eaten bad berries or something, and like he was just supposed to believe her... and to _accept_ her. She been dead but now she suddenly wasn't? She was a pirate thief who'd stolen time to have him? She'd made a deal with a god? It was complete _crazy-talk_ and Ace refused to believe any of it; if she really was his mother, she was probably just lying to get out of trouble for being gone so long.

She didn't even look like a pirate; she looked weak and fragile, too skinny and too pretty and too sad and too fake. The tall and buff lady with the purple hair had looked kind of like a pirate, but the woman pretending to be Ace's mother definitely couldn't be one. She looked way too... soft.

Except... that voice. That voice had been anything but soft. It had been solid and unmoving and sounded a thousand times stronger than the teary woman it belonged to. And the air in the room had become so thick and so heavy! So unbelievably intense! Even though she'd been crying and weak, suddenly the woman had seemed a hundred times her size and felt like the strongest, most powerful person Ace had ever met. He'd been stupidly helpless against it.

Ace clenched his fists at the memory of that moment. He _hated_ being helpless; he wasn't scared of anything! And yet he'd been paralyzed, unable to even think about moving. He should know better than freezing in fear by now. He should _be_ better than that! But he'd just been... trapped.

Part of it might have been from surprise, though, because he knew that voice. Not the woman's voice, but... the voice she'd used – the pressure and intensity of it. He recognized the way it made his chest tremble and his skin shiver, the air thick and heavy, and his ears ring. He knew that bone-shaking undertone and heart-seizing echo, but he'd shoved the memory out-of-mind until now.

He had that voice too.

He'd wanted to ask what it was after it happened, because Dadan knew and Ace knew she knew because her eyes were too wide for her not to know, but... she'd looked so afraid. It had saved his life and hers, but Ace never wanted to see Dadan look like that again, like she was seeing someone else entirely. The voice had scared _him,_ and he could guess who she'd seen and that scared him even more.

So he hid that feeling deep under everything else that made him a 'monster-child' and resolved never to use it again, never to ask about it, not unless he'd exhausted every other option. And maybe not even when he was that desperate, because he'd been sure that the terrible voice, which brought adults to their knees and made his fingers itch so deep they burned, belonged to his father. He wanted nothing to do with that man. It was bad enough that he had that man's devil blood, he wanted nothing else.

But that woman – that weak-looking, lying woman who said she was his mother – she had it too.

And Ace only had to look at his hand to see more similarities. He'd never met anyone else who had so many freckles on their skin – _all_ over their skin. Luffy had a few spots and some of the Dadan Family did too, but Ace was the only one covered in brown freckles from his face to his toes. Or he had been, until the woman showed up, covered in them too.

Ace didn't know how to have a mother. He didn't know enough about mothers to even tell whether or not the lying woman was his mother. He didn't know much of anything about parents in general, beyond Sabo's useless idiot ones, because why would he bother to think about a father he didn't want and a mother who'd never seemed important? All he'd ever had was a grandfather who really belonged to Luffy, and two brothers that went further than blood, one of whom was _dead_ now.

He didn't want a mother; he didn't _need_ a mother. He especially didn't need or want a mother who talked crazy and told weird lies, and spoke in an impossible voice that made his mind freeze in terror and his heart pound with pain. Sabo was right... mothers were awful.

Why had Dadan and Makino even let her come in the house? Telling lies like that?

“AAAAAAACE!”

Ace's head snapped up and he saw his little brother stumbling through the jungle, expression upset and looking around desperately. Ace hadn't gone far from the Dadan Family house, even though he'd wanted to run far away, because he couldn't bring himself to leave Luffy alone. So he'd stayed on the edges of a jungle, keeping a sharp eye the purple-haired woman teaching his brother how to throw a punch. She'd seemed... alright, and straightforward, and Luffy had looked like he was having fun, so Ace had watched from a distance before getting distracted by angry, looping thoughts.

“I'm over here, Lu!” Ace called before Luffy ran too far into the jungle.

He was sitting at the base of an enormous rock and had been for awhile, so he didn't really feel like getting up, even if he was starting to get hungry. He'd gone for longer without eating and he didn't feel much like dinner anyway – too angry and overwhelmed and too turned upside-down for food. Ace almost snorted picturing the reactions of the Dadan Family at that idea.

Luffy immediately scrambled through the leaves and over tree roots to where Ace was sitting, brimming with excitement over something – probably having that purple-haired woman teach him how to punch without falling on his ass. Ace tried to smile back, but he didn't really feel like smiling, and Luffy immediately picked up on it by the way his bright grin faltered. Ace's little brother stopped right in front of him and plopped down on his butt, crossing his legs and staring intensely at Ace.

“What's the matter?”

Ace sighed, because Luffy could be annoyingly noticing sometimes.

“It's not important, Lu.”

Luffy, of course, was not deterred in the slightest. “Who's the blonde lady?”

“Nobody.”

“Wha'did she wanna talk about?”

“Nothing!”

“Aaace! Wha'did she say?”

“Nothing!” Ace insisted, leaning back as Luffy crawled forward and stuck his face into his big brother's. Ace lifted an arm and shoved Luffy's intruding face away, but lightly, so Luffy only flipped toes-over-nose back once instead of actually getting hurt.

Once he was right-side up, Luffy growled and tackled his brother. Together, Ace and Luffy rolled over the ground, with Ace trying to shove his little brother off and Luffy trying to wrestle his big brother down. Luffy was growling like a grizzly cub, grinning as he grappled with his annoying rubber limbs, and Ace gave up trying to stop him, growled back, and then fought back. Before long, Ace had Luffy pinned, rubber arms locked behind his back as Ace sat on him.

“Aaace! Get off!” Luffy demanded, laughing and struggling. “Lemme go!”

Ace snorted and flopped off his brother, sure that Luffy would tackle him again the moment he let go and more than ready for it. But Luffy just sat up and crossed his legs, peering intensely up at his kneeling brother, and said again, “Who's the blonde lady?”

Ace sighed and sat down fully. “Nobody, Luffy; she's not important.”

“Then who is she?”

“Lu-”

“You're sad! And mad! Why are you sad'n'mad if she's not important?”

“Because she says she's my _mother_!” Ace snapped before he could help himself.

Luffy gaped; his eyes bulged and his mouth dropped open. “You have a mom?!” he demanded, looking totally bewildered, like he'd never even considered that Ace could have parents. That Luffy had never asked, like it didn't matter at all, was one of Ace's many favorite things about his little brother.

“Everybody has a mom, stupid,” Ace scoffed.

“Not me,” Luffy said simply. Not sadly, not angrily, but just as though it was another fact of life. The sky was blue, water was wet, and Monkey D. Luffy didn't have a mother.

Ace remembered then that he'd never heard anything about Luffy's parents, not at all. Garp had just shown up one day and dropped another kid on the Dadan Family, announced Luffy was his grandson (actual, not adopted), and that was that. Luffy had never mentioned any parents, Garp hadn't explained, and Ace hadn't asked. But now Ace wondered where exactly Luffy came from. How much did Luffy even know about his own parents? Not much, apparently.

Ace huffed. “Well you've got to have one _somewhere_ ,” he said. “Mine's supposed to be dead.”

“But she didn't _look_ dead. Is she a zombie? That'd be so _cool!”_

“She's not a-” Ace began, but stopped, because... the woman had been dead but now wasn't. Did that make her a zombie? Was his mother a zombie? What if she was just a zombie pretending to be his mother so she could eat their brains?

“I don't even know if she really is my mom!” Ace said instead, tugging at the leaves of a nearby plant with restless hands and trying not to think about whether or not his mother was a zombie.

Luffy cocked his head to one side in confusion. “Wha'd'ya mean?”

Ace waved his hands about a bit, trying to explain without explaining. “It's just... she was telling all these weird lies about where she'd been,” he said helplessly, torn between letting his voice break and getting angry all over again. “She tried to say that she made a deal with a _god_ and stole some time or something, and it's the god's fault that she's been gone so long, like I'm just some stupid kid! Why would I _believe_ something like that?”

Luffy frowned, thinking about it. He might have said something, if he'd been given more time, but another, unfamiliar voice cut in from above.

“Oho! So ya don't believe in the big fish, child o' D?”

 

**{10}**

 

Rouge was lying on the floor of the Dadan Family house, staring at the bottle of sake as though that might somehow create more of it. It felt a sad, sad thing to be completely horizontal without actually being drunk, but here she was – not drunk and in no real state to be. Drinking when she'd just messed up meeting her son was not a good idea, especially because she was alone and she didn't want Ace or Dragon's son to come back and find her completely sloshed.

She was already a crazy liar; she didn't need to be a drunkard on top of that.

Ace and Dragon's son were not far from the house, just on the edges of the jungle, with Ace still radiating upset and Luffy a mixture of curiosity and concern. Rouge wasn't listening any further than just being aware of their position, knowing full well that her son would probably be angry at even that, but she wasn't leaving Ace alone again. If by some strange, impossible happenstance he actually needed her, she was going to be there for him for the first time in ten years.

Liz knew there was no changing Rouge's mind here, so the first mate hadn't tried. Instead, Liz put Rouge in the capable care of Makino and the Dadan Family, and told Rouge to _stay put_ (like her captain was a disobedient puppy who should know better) while she ran back to House Royale.

Out by Fushia Village, Grieffe had been projecting worry for awhile now, and Grieffe actually worried never boded well. Grieffe only worried about problems that she couldn't shoot, and there should be very few immediate problems that she couldn't shoot at the moment. So Liz had gone back to House Royale to check it out and keep Grieffe informed, taking off a speed that said she would be there and back again soon enough. Rouge could feel Liz now, stomping her concern into the ground as she ran, and smiled faintly at her first mate's fairly open worry for her lover.

Liz had always been a fairly open book with her feelings (unrepentant flirt, sure, but head-over-heels for the gunmaster for decades), at least to people who had known her for awhile, and Grieffe was pretty reluctantly similar, though it wasn't as obvious. Rouge wondered when her friends were planning on telling her that they were sleeping together now. Hopefully soon, now that Na-chan had found out.

But still, Rouge wouldn't mind if they wanted to keep it to themselves a little longer. Secrecy could be fun. Besides, they had always been a fragile couple, and now it seemed that everything Rouge touched seemed to turn to dust sooner or later, if it didn't outright explode in her face.

She felt less like the World's Greatest Thief right now and more like the World's Most Arrogant Fool.

It was a small mercy that Makino was keeping the Dadan Family away and had left Rouge without anything to get drunk on. Makino had always been a clever girl, and she owned a bar now, so her knowledge on how to handle the angry and miserable and when to cut people off was mighty.

Rouge checked on the boys again, for lack of anything else to do. Luffy was still concerned and Ace seemed more exasperated than outright angry, as the brothers sat by the sea together.

The sea? In the middle of the jungle and mountains?

Rouge sat up and the sudden rush of blood made her head spin. Her vision spotted black and the world tilted, but with some help from her cane and the rest of her senses, Rouge forced herself to her feet anyway. She stumbled outside, just like her first mate had told her not to, and ran for the boys and the familiar echo of the ocean somehow rippling in the middle of the trees.

The air reeked of salt and fish.

 

**{10}**

 

There was a... troll woman thing, sitting on the top of the rock Ace had been leaning on. She had greenish black locks of hair and dark skin covered in barnacles, along with enormous, blank, white-blue eyes. She was balancing on long arms and short legs, and grinning down at them with an unnaturally wide mouth of pointed yellow teeth.

“Who the hell are you?” Ace demanded, jumping up and shoving his little brother behind him.

The troll woman just grinned even wider, hopping slightly in place. “Oho! Tha clever girl got a rude lil' babe, eh?” she said, sounding pleased. “A rude lil' prince that dunno a thing 'bout what she did fer him and hates his ol' man. A child o' tha children o' D. that thinks them a liar and a devil! Oho! Now that's fun!”

Ace scowled up at her, confused and angry at being confused. “Who the hell are you?” he growled again, repeatedly having to push his stupidly curious brother behind him. “What do you want?”

“I'm tha one who needed something stole by yer ol' lady, princey,” the troll woman said easily.

_(“Her name is Cee, and I believe she's a goddess.”)_

“...Cee?”

The troll woman bounced again, a strange half-jig of sorts. “That's me! Not gonna tell ya tha true name, but ya can call me that – attracts less attention, ya know,” she added informatively, casually, but Ace didn't at all feel at ease. “Suppose ya would know some about tha power o' names.”

Something was coming; Ace didn't know what but he could feel something gathering, getting closer. The air stank so badly of salt and fish that he thought he could choke on it. The troll woman was dripping wet, absolutely soaking, and small streams of water were dribbling, trickling, streaming down the rock from where she bounced.

Ace backed away from the puddles growing at the base of the rock, pushing Luffy back with him. He didn't think she was a goddess, because that was crazy, but he didn't trust this creature. She didn't feel like a normal person; she didn't really feel like a person at all, and that was on top of not looking like one either.

What kind of person stank like the ocean and dripped like a sponge with a river inside?

“Now what izzit I'm wantin'?” the troll woman mused. “I wanna talk ta yer ol' lady.”

“Then go talk to _her,_ ” Ace sneered, still edging away from the water.

The troll woman cocked her head, still grinning, but now her smile had no amusement in it. “I would, but ya see, lil' prince, she's all sad now. In no state fer talkin'. So now I wanna have a few words with her babe.” She wasn't so much dripping now as water was pouring out of her, streaming from every inch of her skin. “I like tha clever girl, ya see. Wanna help her where I can.”

“What does that mean?!” Luffy demanded over Ace's shoulder.

Ace's heart felt like it skipped a beat, as the troll woman's blank eyes somehow turned to his little brother. She was wearing the water she dripped like a thick second skin now; the air was so thick and wet he felt a breath away from drowning. Ace shoved Luffy behind him again, torn between fight and flight but leaning towards running like hell.

“Oho...” the troll woman said slyly, voice bubbling more quietly through the water. “What a frightful pair has found each other, and now and ever they're brothers. Share a drink and don't even think about how they're changed the way the world turns.”

“What?”

Water surged up from the ground, a sudden river between Ace and Luffy as the troll woman burst into cackles. Ace, heart in his throat, grabbed for Luffy's hands, but they were wet and slipped out with terrible ease. Ace tried to yell and only gasped down water, choking as he was thrown apart from Luffy.

When the impossible currents released him, he was left coughing painfully and shuddering on the forest floor, soaking wet and feeling small. Almost of its own accord, the salt water dribbled out of his mouth and away from him, pushing against his desperate attempts to breathe.

“Nice talk, lil' prince,” the troll woman said from far above him, voice amused and thick with terrible power. “Tell yer ol' lady I'm tired o' waitin' ta have a word with her.”

Ace finally took in a full breath, clutching at his throat as though he could claw the salt out of it, gasping painfully and blinking tears out of his eyes. His hands pushed against the wet ground beneath him and his forced himself up, because the troll woman's presence was gone, leaving only the lingering smell of salt and fish, and it was far too quiet.

He looked up and he was right; the troll woman and her mysterious water were gone. And it was far too quiet because his brother wasn't here to break the silence. Luffy was gone, missing, and the only sign of him was the beloved straw hat that he would never willingly leave behind, resting atop the rock.

 _No,_ was Ace's first and only thought. _No, no, nonononono._

He ignored the shaking in his limbs and the burn in his throat, yanked himself out of the mud and flung himself towards the hat like a lifeline. Even at the top of the rock, with his hands white-knuckled around his brother's most precious possession, he could see no sign, hear no one, feel nothing.

It was his worst nightmare, all the horrible thoughts that crept out on quiet nights, come to life. His little brother, Luffy, the person he had been charged with protecting, was gone and he had been helpless to stop the creature that took him. It was his worst nightmare happening _again._

He couldn't survive this again. He just couldn't.

Ace's scream for his brother was barely audible, because his lungs were breathless and his throat was raw. Luffy's name was more of a ragged keen more than anything else, which broke at the end. Just attempting it sent Ace into coughing fits again.

That was how the lying woman found him: collapsed on the top of a rock, holding a straw hat to his chest like his heart had fallen out and he needed to force it back inside before he died.

“Ace!” she said, concerned but calm even though _the whole world was falling apart._ Her cane clattered against the rock as she climbed it, but even though she reached for him once she reached him, she refrained from touching him and only hovered just above his skin. “Ace, what happened? I need you to tell me _exactly_ what happened.”

“...Sh-she t-took... t-took h-him,” Ace managed to choke out, barely remembering not to crush his brother's beloved hat. Luffy would be so angry with him if Ace did anything to his hat.

“Who took him? Ace, I need you to tell me exactly who took him and what they said,” Portgas D. Rouge said quietly, steady and solid and calm, except for the hands hovering over him like she wanted to touch but something was physically holding her back. “Ace, please, I can-”

“Get away from me.”

His voice was hoarse and cracking and hardly intimidating, but Rouge flinched back all the same.

Ace glared at her. “This is y-your f-fault,” he accused hatefully. He didn't care who she was or where she'd been, but that troll creature had attacked them and taken Luffy because of _her._ “She t-took him b-because of YOU! THIS IS YOUR F-FAULT! GET-”

Then the weak-looking woman suddenly grabbed him by the shoulders and her freckled face was all but glaring into his. The air wasn't thick with that horrible pressure that made his chest tremble and ears ring, but it felt close to it, on the edge of descending. Only it wasn't concentrated on him this time, instead, it swirled around him, powerful and angry and... protective?

“Ace, calm down. Luffy is _still_ on the island,” Rouge said, punctuating each word with a small shake to make sure they burned into his skull. “He's not far, he's not moving, and she's with him, but I can get him back. I just need you to tell me exactly what happened and we can get him _back.”_

 _Back?_ Ace gaped at her, wide-eyed and painfully hopeful.

Rouge took a deep breath, looked him straight and the eyes and said, “I know this is my fault, Ace. This is my fault, but I can get him back if you calm down and tell me what happened. You need to calm down for Luffy. Now, the person who took him... describe them for me.”

“S-she – she c-called herself Ce-Cee.”

“Did she look like a sea troll?” Rouge asked, expression unchanging even when Ace nodded shakily. “She's the goddess I stole something for. I know her. What did she say she wanted?”

“She w-wants to t-talk to you. Sh-she's t-tired of w-waiting.”

Rouge scowled and closed her eyes for a moment. “Why are immortals always so impatient?” she muttered under her breath.

Then she opened her eyes and her face softened as she stared at him. Her grip on his shoulders gentled, then her hands slid away into her lap, and the intense pressure swirling around them loosened although it didn't disappear entirely.

“I'm sorry for touching you without your permission,” she said, sounding so genuine and sincere that Ace could only stare at her. “It's going to be okay, Ace. _Luffy_ is going to be okay. Cee-san can't do anything to hurt him, okay? He's going to be fine.”

Ace searched her face with wide eyes. She'd looked genuine and sincere earlier too, saying those ridiculous things, and he'd been sure she was a liar. But now... he just couldn't tell. He didn't know what that troll creature had been and could barely even start to believe that gods and goddesses were real even now. He felt like he was dreaming. This had to be a hoax or a trick. He didn't know what was real anymore and he couldn't tell if this lying liar of a woman was telling the truth or not – about anything.

“...H-How do you know?” Ace demanded shakily.

“Gods have Rules,” she answered calmly, “and there are many Rules on how they may interact with humans – their interference is limited – and they are not permitted to bring harm to people who are considered important and have important destinies in their future.”

She carefully reached forward with one hand, hovering a finger above the precious hat in Ace's arms as though she wanted to tap it but couldn't touch it. It was probably a good thing that she didn't touch it; Ace might have bitten her hand off.

“Luffy is a very important person with a lot of future ahead of him,” Rouge continued softly. “Cee-san cannot harm him just as she cannot harm you. She is very dangerous and whimsical-”

“Whimsical?”

“Flighty, easily changing her moods and decisions,” Rouge explained, still soft and gentle and terrifyingly intense. “But she is also somewhat honorable and very mischievous, and her powers are lesser over the land. It is me she wants, not him, right? If it comes down to it, she will trade him for me, and he will be fine. Do you understand?”

Ace did not understand at all. He did not understand the impossible creature that had taken his little brother, whom he cannot lose or he'll go mad. He did not understand this lying liar of a woman who could so easily make him doubt what was real and what was not.

Thankfully, the woman seemed to see this in his eyes.

“You and I will get him back, Ace,” she said, with that terrible, impossible pressure swirling around her like she wore it every day of her life.

It was as immense as it had been the first time, but now that it was being focused on something else, it was thankfully less seizing and freezing and all-around heavy as the entire sky falling down on him. Though the deep and intense feelings threaded through it were not concentrated on him, they still surrounded him and scared him no less than they did before.

The more he saw, the less he understood.

Portgas D. Rouge retracted her hand from the hat and slid down to the ground, her cane clattering against the rock. Then she stood tall next to it, so thin that it looked like a gentle breeze might knock her over and so steady that it looked like a howling storm couldn't move her. Leaning on her cane, she looked up to him on the rock, wearing such a kindly, genuine, sure expression that Ace almost wanted to physically recoil from it and its lying look.

“Let's go get your brother back,” she said, and Ace didn't trust her or her expression at all. It seemed too real and not real enough – too true to be false and too false to be true – and he couldn't believe in a woman who said such ridiculous, unbelievable things with such a serious, honest face.

“Wh-why do you c-care?” Ace demanded flatly.

Why _did_ she care? She had to want something; strange adults always wanted something. Greedy liars, the lot of them. What did she _want?_ What did any of these strange women _want_ from him?

“Because you're my son,” she answered, with a sad look in her eyes again. Ace hated that sad regret that looked so real that it reached unreal from the other side. “What's important to you is important to me too.” He couldn't believe that, just as he couldn't believe her next words: “Any brother of yours is a son of mine.”

Ace stared at her, rubbing his fingers over his brother's precious straw hat.

“I don't believe you,” he said finally.

Rouge cringed slightly, a flash of hurtful pain that broke the strong, put-together, perfect expression that looked out of place with her lying words and soft appearance. It was similar to the hurt, teary expressions she'd had after he'd accused her of lying the first time, between the intense pressure and the sad regret and sorry smiles. He hadn't been paying attention then, too scared and too panicking and too utterly upset, but the hurt cutting through her face looked far more real than the rest of it.

She covered it up quickly though, barely dropping her strong, sure, empathetic smile for more than a second. But the smile that came back had something new to it, something angry or guilty or frustrated or shamed that satisfied Ace as it terrified him. There was something sharp to the lying woman's eyes now, something twisted to her reassuring smile, something vaguely... _approving_ to the intense pressure still swirling around her.

“I wouldn't believe me either,” she said, “but do you want to find your brother or not?”

 


	11. Of Goddesses and Women

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Now, Portgas D. Rouge and her son rush after a goddess and her captive. But once a upon a time, the Blackjack Pirates were to be feared for good reason. Also once upon a time, a man loved the sea, and she loved him back.

 

“How do you know where he is?” Ace demanded finally, in lieu of verbally answering her question. The answer was obvious just looking at him, with all that ferocity and pain and determination.

It was disappointing on several levels to have her son being forced to trust her like this, given next to no other options to retrieve his beloved brother, and Rouge fully intended to call Cee out on meddling when they met. If this was the goddess’ idea of helping, then Rouge wanted none of it. Ace should have been able to come to her in his own time, and didn’t deserve to suffer this way, especially after the loss of his other brother.

On the other hand, if Cee was truly angry about having to wait so long to have a conversation – Rouge would not pretend to think that the old troll was any less whimsical and self-centered than any of the others of her kind – then Rouge would have to do something else. She could only hope that Cee wasn’t inclined to make her a liar to Ace, as Rouge wasn’t certain if Luffy was actually protected by the incomprehensible Rules that governed Cee’s kind.

Whatever the case, Rouge was determined to see both boys out of this without any harm and would refuse all other options, but… Cee would be a formidable foe. Rouge did not wish to have Cee as an enemy, especially the goddess in her entirety.

“I can sense his voice nearby, still on this island,” Rouge said truthfully, because while she could not let Ace know the truth of the genuine danger his brother could be in, she would be as honest as she could be. He deserved that from at least.

Once she noticed the increase in skepticism at this statement – oh, what a knowing, careful son she had – she added, “I can do this because of something called Observation Haki.” No matter how Ace cocked his head and strained, these were not the sort of voices that could actually be _heard._

At the complete lack of recognition and comprehension on his face, Rouge repressed further homicidal urges against Garp. With Ace’s heritage as it was, her son could have been nothing but a Haki user. Rouge would never have let Ace stumble around in the dark like this on Haki! But, then again, Rouge also never would have left Ace to stumble around in the dark on a great many things that Garp apparently had. However did Dragon become what he became at this rate?

It took every last bit of Rouge’s acting abilities to say casually, “I wouldn’t be surprised if you already had some ability in the skill, without anyone here to teach or guide you. You already have the rarest kind of Haki, after all.”

Ace stared at her some more, slightly impassive, mostly disbelieving, and a little bit calculating behind both of those. That look made Rouge’s heart ache again, although this wasn’t hard, because just looking at Ace at all made her heart ache. Just… there he was… her half-grown, suspicious, angry stranger of a son who’d gotten too old too fast in terrible ways.

“It’s the third and last kind, called Conqueror’s Haki,” Rouge said, leaking more of her will out into the swirling, furious, protective mass already surrounding her. Ace seemed clever enough to connect the dots by the name alone, but a subtle touch of punctuation couldn’t hurt.

Some people never seemed to get it until Rouge kicked their legs out from under them and made them taste dirt, but Ace obviously wasn’t one of them. Her son’s eyes widened slightly, then there was a brush of fear, then further calculation. Thoughts were passing behind his eyes – _Roger’s_ eyes – at a remarkable rate, and Rouge wondered almost desperately what they were.

She was almost tempted to glean what she could of them, but that would be crossing a worse line than the one she’d already crossed with Ace today.

“I’ll tell you more about Haki as we go to Luffy and Cee-san,” Rouge said, interrupting. She wasn’t panicking, partly because of Ace, but keeping a temperamental creature like Cee waiting any longer wasn’t a very good idea. “Let’s hurry, don’t you think?”

 

**{11}**

 

Luffy spat out a mouthful of seawater and broke into involuntary coughs that sounded painful. As soon as he was able, he glared angrily at his captor and tried to struggle again. But the enormous, watery first that held him, enveloping him from the chest down, sapped most of his strength. That he could keep his head and glare at all, even tiredly, was impressive.

“LEMME GO!” he yelled for the nth time, high voice hoarse and cracking.

Even without visible pupils or irises, Cee somehow managed to roll her pearly eyes at him from where she was lounging on a dais of water. She had paid enough attention to the little Devil Fruit user to keep him alive on their flight through the jungle, moving at impossible speeds, but little else.

Now they were waiting, in a small, hidden bay between the mountains and jungle. Both the troll’s perch and the fist were raised unnaturally out of the water’s surface, floating in the bay, with an enormous, unbroken wave waiting just behind these shapes. The wave was taller than all the trees around the bay, and held there, swirling against itself, as though waiting too.

Luffy kept yelling, mostly at the little troll sitting on the water and some about people picking him up and taking him places without him wanting them to. The noise was enough that Cee gave a heavy groan, then a heavier sigh, and heaved herself to her short legs and long arms. She waddled over to him on her toes and knuckles, her watery perch moving with her and rising until she was looming over him – eerie, unnatural, and very inhuman.

Luffy just glared mutinously at her, then spat into her watery pillar.

Cee stared, then broke into cackling laughter – ugly snorts and hideous hoots. She bowled herself over and rolled back and forth on her unnatural perch in mirth. “Ohoho _hooo!_ No wonder yer tha pince’s brother, cuz yer definitely his ol’ lady’s and his ol’ man’s boy!” she howled, wiping salty tears from her large eyes. “Oho! Yer gonna be a fun one!”

“Just lemme GO already, Ugly Lady!”

Cee stopped laughing. She flopped over to stare at him with near glowing eyes. “S’cuse me, lil’ king?” she said, the waters around her growing agitated. “Ya wanna repeat that thing ya said about beautiful me?”

Luffy glared at her, unimpressed and disbelieving. “Ugly,” he said flatly.

Cee’s misshapen face screwed up and she loomed even higher over him, then she launched herself forward and shoved her scowling face down into Luffy’s own. Luffy’s brave face finally broke and a flicker of genuine fear crossed his face. He was held helplessly in the middle of any Devil Fruit user’s worst enemy by its very angry, very powerful manifestation.

“Sometimes I gotta wonder if children o’ D. are jus’ that brave or jus’ that stupid,” Cee said coldly.

Then the hideous troll drew back to her watery dais, regarding him like an ant. There was something different about her now. Her legs were growing longer, her dark skin smoother and more golden-toned, and her blackish green hair becoming less like thick sponges more like long sea-grass. The trollish goddess had a new layer of fat to her too, thick and blubbery, making her look more like a mix of a strange seal and person rather than a barnacle-covered ape of the sea.

“Would ya like t’hear a story, child o’ D?” she asked mildly. “No, oho, wait, I don’t if ya do or not. Yer my bait, tha thief and prince are being surprisingly slow, and I’m getting’ bored. … Lemme tell you about how I met yer brother’s ol’ lady.”

 

**{11}**

 

“Some people believe that Haki is the manifestation of people’s willpower, but I have heard it commonly said that Observation Haki is less interacting with the world and instead letting the world interact with you. My gunmaster is much more adept at this kind than I am, and I’m sure she’d be happy to explain it better.”

Some part of Rouge adored this – being alive to make this memory, being able to do anything at all with Ace – even though she was out of breath, minutely terrified for her son’s brother and what the danger meant to both boys, trying to calculate Cee’s potential motivations, and Ace was only running beside her because he didn’t know where they were going and refused to run behind her.

“It’s exhausting.” So exhausting to stretch themselves as far as they could witness, save for Grieffe, who had always had a terrible reach and insight over the world. “But it’s useful to have eyes in the back of your head.” And deadly when masterfully applied.

And absolutely necessary, when playing the Game and dealing with gods.

 

**{11}**

 

A pair of mercenaries vaulted over the barricade, slamming their backs against the wood for shelter from the hailstorm of gunfire that had neatly felled their comrades around them as they all ran. Bolting as soon as the ship had appeared from the thin air of the night was the only thing that had given the slightest of chances, and these two had only been spared so far by sheer luck.

“Shit, shit, _shit!”_ one gasped, panting heavily. “That was… that was…”

“Gambling fucking Scarlett!” the other finished. Because only one ship in all the seas had pitch black wood and blood red sails, with a grinning, spade-eyed, black skull for a symbol. “Fucking hell! That noble prick didn’t say shit about pissing off Re-”

“No!” the first interrupted, staying very low and turning to face the second directly, face grey with fear. “That shooting… that sh- that was _Whitecross!_ We need to-”

He didn’t finish his sentence. The barricade next to him exploded with splinters and he slumped to the ground without another word. Sprawled at an unnatural angle, the dead man stared blankly up at nothing, a perfect bullet hole and a handful of splinters in his head. Like their fallen comrades.

The second blinked down at the dead first.

Or, well, he tried to blink. He managed to close his eyes, but then the barricade behind him exploded in the exact same fashion. He slumped to the ground with a crown of wood shards and blood, and an exit wound that made a misery of his face. What was left of his eyes didn’t open again.

Aboard the fearsome Gambling Scarlett, two men stood perfectly still as a skeleton crew hustled around them and two unseen mercenaries dropped dead to the ground. Barricades and walls and other obstacles blocking lines of sight meant little to the both of them, but especially to the shorter man holding a still smoking gun, who had felled at least a dozen mercenaries in extremely short order.

“Excellent shooting as always, Master Whitecross,” the taller man said admiringly, low tone rich with long-won loyalty. “Your new bullets are as masterful as the gunmaster shooting them.”

These two men really could not have looked more different.

The taller one was a giant of a man, nearly seven feet tall, with dark brown skin that was nearly black, thickly muscled arms, and bushy black hair that drooped around his face like a halo. He wore a cropped and sleeveless top, a black cloth covering his face from the nose down, and heavy, thickly-belted cargo pants with even heavier boots. He held a massive warhammer, which rested on one broad shoulder and looked like it might smash apart mountains if given the chance.

The shorter man, who barely reached the tall man’s shoulders, resembled more of a wraith. He wore a closed, bell-shaped black coat with a high collar and a white cross down the front. The coat covered him from chin to ankle, with worn boots covering his feet, a white cloth masking his face, and a white bandana hiding his hair and forehead. Painted black teeth and nostrils made the mask covering reminiscent of a skull, especially since the only visible sliver of skin was bone white, with a black eyepatch over his left eye.

He might have resembled some sort of mad doctor, or perhaps a priest, if not for the smoking gun in his gloved hand.

“Thank you, Haites,” Whitecross Simon said, voice low and deathly as he mysteriously sheathed the gun somewhere on his person. “Prepare the cannons. Reinforcements have heard the gunshots and are approaching rapidly. We must greet them with corresponding excitement.”

“Yes, sir,” the tall man, Haites, answered as he moved to obey.

No reinforcements were at all visible, and his senses were not quite as sharp yet to find everything he had no hint of, but he trusted the Blackjack gunmaster to know every foe in this fortress that had caught sight of the pirate ship lounging in their bay. Haites could feel several eyes on them already.

“The most pertinent reinforcements will come through the left door of the battlements,” Whitecross said, letting Haites load and direct one of the deck cannons before making some minute adjustments. Around them, the crew did much the same. “Thank you, Haites.”

Whitecross lit the fuse without any further warning, and the cannon burst with smoke and a sound that echoed all around the bay. Soon enough, the whole fortress would catch sight of Gambling Scarlett on their doorstep, but for now, Whitecross stepped calmly back. He and Haites watched the missile sail through the night towards the battlements, directly towards the door Whitecross had spoken of, one that no normal person or pirate would have seen.

As they watched, the door swung open. A small company of mercenaries were there, wary but ready to investigate the sounds of gunfire, but not a single one of them managed to step outside. Because as soon as the door swung open, the cannonball flew gratefully through the just-opened doorway.

Haites and Whitecross watched, impressed and smug respectively, as the reinforcements were blasted back and then the door was blasted off its hinges as the missile exploded – with a thunderous and spectacular show of fire. Haites hummed in pleasure at the flashy statement. The whole fortress seemed to tremble with the blow, and if the inhabitants had managed to miss the gunfire and the cannonfire they would surely be awakened by the quaking of the stone.

“Excellent,” Whitecross said, as pleased as the feared gunmaster could ever sound. “All but two dead, who will join the others soon enough. Prepare a barrage for further reinforcements.”

He drew his gun again, flicking a switch, as though he planned to shoot everyone unaware enough to come into his range even for the barest of seconds. It would have been a more merciful end than the cannonfire, Haites knew, although an equally as terrifying one.

“Our loudness has woken the majority of the fortress,” Whitecross continued, unperturbed as Haites shouted for the crew to prepare a barrage, unbothered by the rising sentiment of terror coming from the fortress. “We have their attention. Let us hold it so our captain and first mate face as few obstacles as possible on their way out. This detour is upsetting us enough as it is.”

 

**{11}**

 

“See, back in tha day, I was just like I am now… powerful… wonderful… beautiful like the sparkin’ waters themselves. I can look any way I want, ya know. Be ugly like a barnacle, beautiful like a shell, sharp like a spiky urchin, and soft like wave foam.”

Cee’s pearly eyes gleamed as she grinned at her captive again. “I’mma bit beyond yer ken, y’see. Shallow like a pool, deep like the dark. I can be kind like warm lagoons and terrible like winter storms. Anything I wanna be is what I am. All at once.

“I’m _wonder_ ful, lil’ king, in the _old_ ways. Men love me; I drown them. They sing my praises, then curse my temper while I sink their ships. So be nice ta pretty ol’ me, y’hear?”

Cee lounged further back into her watery perch, gaze drifting off of Luffy and towards the sky.

“…One man loved me,” she said, almost quietly, tone of voice changing into something less abrasive and more wistful. “So, _so_ much that I could hear his heart singin’ above all tha others.” She sighed, but not sadly, more… dreamily. “Such a lonely man… such an understandin’ man… made of courage and companionship… adventure and acceptance… and love. So _much_ love.

“And when a man’s got that much love and devotion in ‘im… for all tha storms and tha deeps and tha monsters in my breasts… for all my nice and all my mean, all my calm and all my rage… because of and not despite… having all those dreams and adventures…” She sighed again, helplessly, a long-fingered hand with nails like scales pressed against a golden-brown, wet, leathery chest. “…Lil’ king, oho, I fell in love too.”

She burst suddenly into shrieking laughter. “Me! In love! With a mortal man of all things! Oho, oho… men love me an’ I drown them, screamin’ and scared, but… oho, not him. No, not him! I went ta him with my worst storms and he _smiled_ at me – cursed a bit – weathered me out! Talked ta me jus’ like he always did! The nerve of him!

“…He’s a pirate, o’course. Oho, and I was so gone on him then. Cee an’ a man… Cee an’ her sailor. … We were livin’ happy back then… side by side and so in love… in our strange way… fer a time.”

 

**{11}**

 

“Armament Haki is the second kind – the ability to armor yourself against anything, while retaining all mobility. If you hold it steady and strong, no weapon can cut your skin, no flame can burn you, no force can break it. It interferes with and withstands all Devil Fruit abilities, to at least some degree.”

Ace said nothing. He hadn’t said anything throughout this entire run through the jungle, and Rouge had been talking more and more to compensate. He was focused on keeping pace with her, even though he could without doubt run faster, and was scowling fiercely. She knew he was listening, because he couldn’t fool her there, but he hadn’t answered or asked a single question.

Some part of Rouge felt as though she was trying to tell as many truths as she could in this space he was allowing her, to warn him of as many dangers as possible, to make up for all the history and tales that Garp had hidden from him, to entice him with her experience and knowledge.

“Liz, my first mate, the woman with the purple hair, is a true master of this kind. Far better than I am, really. She describes the ability as an extension of existence, saying that Observation is the first step: witnessing the world, and Armament is the next step: existing in it.”

Rouge had never quite understood what Liz had meant, when her first mate first tried to explain this theory, but now… the statement had saved Rouge’s life several times. Rouge and Liz had enormously different mindsets, but determination and devotion could make up for a lot. Liz had a sense of belonging and confidence that was beyond most people; Liz did not doubt her ability or her place in the world, and it made her as immovable as it made her unstoppable.

Challenging gods was not a time to doubt your own existence and rights.

 

**{11}**

 

At the side of the fortress, there was a wall which, by all accounts, was a perfectly ordinary wall. It was several feet thick, two dozen meters tall, and made from solid stone. It was a hard and sturdy wall, made to withstand and deflect anything that threw itself against it. There were no doors or gates near this particular bit of wall, and little reason for anyone to keep any sort of watch on it, so no one did.

Which was why no one noticed when a blade silently pierced the wall straight through.

This blade, by all accounts, was not a perfectly ordinary blade. It was a rather infamous and deadly sword, wielded by a rather infamous and deadly swordsman, and tonight, instead of the blue-tinged silvery coloring the feared sword normally had, the weapon was pitch black. Like it was covered in some kind of armor, seamless like liquid and as solid as shadow – it gleamed quite dangerously.

Slowly, at first, the blade moved. It cut up the wall surely and straightly, even cleanly, and the most that could coherently be said was that it did not move like a sword through stone should have. It was an impossible sight; because what kind of monstrous strength could do something that made no sense?

If there had been any watchers, they would have been transfixed by the sword and completely missed the dark figure that appeared at the top of the enormous wall. The figure appeared very suddenly, from a stretch of wall without any sort of ladder or tower or anything nearby, and just as suddenly started climbing down the inside of the wall, without any sort of pause in between – straight down the smooth rock, like a humanoid spider or gravity-resistant acrobat. It was equally incredible and transfixing, if not more so, and just as horrifyingly unnatural.

A dozen feet or so from the ground, the climbing figure pushed off from the wall and flipped neatly onto their feet, just as the black blade finished cutting a single-person-sized doorway into the stone. The blade disappeared and figure stepped aside and quite far back, waiting on bouncing feet. They only had to wait a moment before a mighty force pulled the cut stone outwards, yanking it out of the wall.

Once they’d silently set down the chunk of stone, a second figure stepped through the hole, brushing dust off their regally intricate and royally blue, gilded, fur-lined coat. It was an extremely handsome man, tall and broad, with long blue hair curled into ringlets around his shoulders and an equally blue, neatly curled beard. His colorful hair looked even brighter against his pale skin. His layered clothing looked quite courtly, and everything from his heeled boots to the two swords sheathed at his hip looked very well cared for.

As he finished brushing dust from his gloves, the man looked down at the figure waiting for him, who was at least a full foot shorter than him and much leaner. The man looked unsurprised and unimpressed by the smug line of his partner’s posture.

“Y’could have just climbed,” his partner informed him, laughter bubbling behind their every word.

“My esteemed friend and most proud mutt, I could never bear to treat my clothing with such little dignity,” Bluebeard John said, voice deep and displeased. He strode forward, moving surely towards one of the inner buildings of the fortress. “Come, Haruki, we have a hoard to claim.”

Haruki the Jackal quickly bounced after the First Mate of the Blackjack Pirates. Unlike Bluebeard, Haruki was dressed in tattered black from neck to toe, the worn clothing of a sneak-thief or stagehand who’d been gleefully grubbing in the dirt. His head was covered by a dented, grinning dog mask, clumsily painted in black and red, and a tangled mane of brown hair. The least ragged thing about him, which were also the most dangerous thing about him, were the sharp, metallic claws and brass knuckles on his hands that appeared to have seen frequent use.

“So this guy’s a real moron, eh, Johnny?” Haruki said, jumping in front of Bluebeard and skipping backwards so he could face the man while he chattered. “Like, what kind of genius challenges a pirate at all? Much less one who’s _objectively_ proven they’re outta your league?”

“A confident incompetent with something to prove himself, of course,” Bluebeard said wryly. “Who has much to lose and has never lost anything of import, and has not a whit of wit or imagination to lose.”

“Okay, yeah, sure,” Haruki said, dismissing that point with a wave of claw, “But even if ya something survive one of the deadlist bunch of thieves out there, even if y’think ya can fuck with Redblack Jack and something _win,_ getting in bed with Jackie means you’re getting in bed with ol’ Gold Roger too – ‘cause it’s the same bed! Gold Roger!”

“Dear Haruki, I supped not long ago, please do not cruelly strive to upset my refined and delicate palate.”

Haruki ignored this complaint and continued, “Even if ya think Jackie is just a pretty-boy, petty thief, what kind of suicidal moron fucks with a pretty-boy with the demon man twisted around his pinky finger? That’s like walking up behind Bluebeard John and trying to behead him!”

Before Haruki’s last word left his mouth, Bluebeard blue locks and clothes suddenly turned a pitch black – like living armor, seamless like liquid and as solid as steel – and a sword shattered against his back. The lone mercenary it belonged to let out a startled shriek and half-scrambled, half-fell backwards into the corner he’d leapt out from. Once grounded, he stared with wide eyes at the broken remainder of his weapon, then up in fear at the pirate who turned to look at him.

“This is my favorite coat,” Bluebeard said calmly, as said coat bled from unnatural, metallic black back into rich, velvet blue – just like his hair and face and… well, everything. “And out of pure curiosity, if you by some miracle felled me through your surprise – my foolish, outmatched stranger, you – then what in the world had you planned for my fellow?”

Behind Bluebeard, Haruki the Jackal’s mask popped into view, along with a clawed hand. Unlike his partner, who was eerily still, Haruki was bouncing on his feet, and though one could not see his frightening smile, with his grinning dog mask in clumsy paint, it hardly felt needed. Especially as his claws bled from silver to pitch, armored black.

“Now,” Bluebeard said, leaning over to loom, instead of crouching and ruining the cut of his fur-lined coat. “Would you prefer to do this the easy way or the hard way? A good case can be made for both. Either way, you will not be alerting anyone to my captain’s presence while he works.”

 

**{11}**

 

“But then this one scum-feedin’, bottom-dwellin’ _ship-scavenger_ notices us bein’ happy. And oho! He gets _mad._ Red face, green eyes mad. Cuz he loves me too, but in the worst way… in that dark, lurkin’, possessive way that no lady likes… That ain’t any love worth having.”

Cee spat angrily, her perch swirling violent around her.

“Creepy, little dead-man thinks I’m his ta have! And nobody else’s! So he steals some of my shine… he takes most o’ my power, my beauty, my rage away from me! And then, oho, and _then_ tells me I gotta love _him_ ta have only a part of it back!

“Get away from my pirate sailor and love some weak parasite like him? O _ho_!”

Cee’s long-fingered hands clenched in anger. “But he went about his work all sneaky-like,” she growled, the water around her starting to bubble ever-s-slightly. “In tha way that meant I couldn’t jus’ take it back. It was mine! But I couldn’t touch it! Not with my power held apart from me.

“And none of my kind was gonna help me, because those rotten smilers love nothin’ more than to kick folks when they’re down. Especially tha once mighty. I couldn’t do a thing against him and was getting no help from the big fish! But hell if I was gonna let him have his way!

“So I went lookin’ for a sneak-thief, ya see? A mortal sneak-thief. Someone clever and cunning and desperate and fearless. Someone with nothing to lose or a lot to lose an’ an attitude like they got nothing, because those are the vicious folks who’ll do anything to win and win absolutely. Someone _so good_ at what they do and willing to risk everything, that they just might be able to pick a power-hungry dead-man’s pocket and get away with it.”

Cee paused, then grinned a wide and wicked smile. “And that’s when I found ol’ Redblack Jack, the cleverest and most cunning of the lot… the World’s _Greatest_ Thief! Oho! He was perfect! Daring, dashing, devious! A man who’d robbed kings and queens, scorned empires, befriended demons, and never met chains or a noose? Here was a man with a shot at robbing the biggest fishes!

“And yet… something’s wrong.

“The winds are changing and the tide is shifting. The whitecoats are rising and the age of golden giants is dying. The greats are falling one by one… some to the noose… some to the chain… and some lucky ones disappear into a normal life, never to be seen again, for a time at least.

“The Pirate King – the Demon of the Seas – is imprisoned. He’s going to be executed in front of the whole world, but Redblack Jack, his dear friend, is making no moves to save his man. Instead, ol’ Redblack Jack disbands his crew of fearsome fighters and thieves, who all seem to vanish into thin air, and goes on the run and tries to disappear too.”

 

**{11}**

 

Rouge took a deep breath, and then began her explanation of the last kind. Her best of the three, Roger’s best of the three – the soul of what them rise so far (to fall so fast) and what made them so very dangerous. Coming as naturally to her as the others did to her friends, even in their untrained and uncoordinated youth.

“The last kind is called Conqueror’s Haki. It has been described as the third step in a sequence: coming into the world: Armament, seeing the world: Observation, and then… conquering it.”

Ace’s attention would likely be wholly on her if they did not have to run, and he wasn’t pretending that he was barely aware of her existence, much less whatever she was saying. Rouge did not have to wonder why. She knew that he has used it – she did not doubt it comes as naturally to him as it did to her and Roger – and she would guess that it either terrified or answered him. Both, maybe.

“It… if any Haki ability is the manifestation of will, it is this one. It comes from determination and certainty – most often when defending something precious and important: a mission, a dream, a person. Conquering the world is one use for it, or simply living in the world as you wish.

“A strong will is a force unto itself... Haki is the manifestation of this.”

 

**{11}**

 

“Please, do not get up on my account,” a low voice said.

The man woke up instantly, eyes snapping open and sitting bolt upright in his elaborate, four-poster bed. Heart pounding, he immediately laid eyes on the alien presence in his room: a dark and infamous figure sprawled casually in a gilded chair across the room. Not only was it alarming to suddenly find a stranger in his bedroom, but it was also so because the chair hadn’t been there when he’d fallen asleep, and the curtains of his bed hadn’t been tied aside.

He lunged for the sword at his bedside table, which was miraculously still there. Snatching it up and stumbling out of bed, he turned the weapon on the intruder, who hadn’t moved. And while having a weapon was much better than only having a nightshift and cap, it did not help his peace of mind that Redblack Jack was utterly relaxed and looked entirely unimpressed.

Redblack looked exactly as the posters showed him to be, with his long red coat and large red hat, expensive clothes disheveled and heeled boots kicked up onto a gilded footstool. From his wild black hair and tawny brown skin, to the dark stubble on his jaw and red spade tattoos over his eerie, icy blue eyes – seeing him was almost like stepping into his poster. He even seemed to be posing now, though being slim and somewhere between handsome and pretty, he didn’t strike a very intimidating figure.

“You!” the man snarled, sword trembling in his grip. “How did you get in h-?”

“I dislike repeating myself, it is quite tiresome and disrespectful,” Redblack said, interrupting quite casually, before his expression hardened. “Do oblige me this time… **do not get up.”**

The man slumped to the floor instantly, dazed and now sweating, his sword thumping into the carpet. The warm air of the bedroom had suddenly become thick and heavy, under a presence so intense that it felt almost as if the sky itself was pressing down on him. It was unyielding, overwhelming, in his aching bones and rushing blood and thoughtless mind, everywhere and everything at once.

“This is such an unfortunate and avoidable situation, really,” Redblack Jack said, still lounging in his borrowed seat. “I have quite a lot of treasure, had no need or previous inclination to come take yours, but I suppose it was our mutual abundance of pride that was our undoing in the end.”

On the floor, the downed man was sweating heavily, now nearly foaming at the mouth, and gave no answer. Redblack gave an almost disappointed sigh, then hoisted himself up and to his feet. He didn’t even bother to pause in front of the man he had at his feet, instead Redblack crossed the gilded carpet and went for the crystal decanter and glasses that were resting on a nearby table. He took his time pouring himself a glass, then took a sip and hummed.

“But… no… you simply had to declare me a fraud, declare my dear friend a fool being led around by his cock, and declare your fortress – which is quite above average, really, I hate to have my crew ruin it while we speak – indomitable. What horrible accusations, I barely know where to begin.”

Redblack crossed the room again, with a half-filled glass in hand, where the man on the carpet was trembling and attempting to push himself up without much success. The man reached desperately for his fallen sword, but Redblack kicked the blade out of reach with a flourish, and suddenly the pressure around them thickened, like the sky had put more weight on the foot of it pressing down.

 **“Do not try me, this is a delicate balance,”** Redblack said, in a voice with a bone-shaking undertone and a heart-seizing echo. **“You are so far below me that it is a challenge to keep you conscious – far more so than robbing you so. I am also robbing you, by the way.”**

Once the man ceased moving in favor of simply panting for breath, Redblack took another sip and continued, “Let us begin with that first offense: I am no fraud. My title has been well-earned, with a long list of impressive campaigns to my name, and what happens to those who try to claim my feats is well-earned and impressive in their own right, if I do say so myself. I have great pride in this.

“The second offense: Captain Gol Roger is foolish, but he is no fool. There is not anyone who can lead him, just as no one can lead me. Your assumptions upon the health and dynamic of our relationship is insulting, and whatever the state or type of said relationship, it is none of your business.

“And lastly, the third offense,” Redblack said, over the pained moan of his captive, “The idea that your fortress is indomitable is absurd. A pitiful challenge, far below my heights.” He moved to stand in front of the downed man again, downed his drink, and placed the glass on the gilded chair he’d been sitting in. Then he crouched down, expression as unyielding and unfriendly as the air in the room. His icy blue eyes were bright with oncoming cruelty. 

**“Sir, I do not believe you know what indomitable means. Let me show you.”**

 

**{11}**

 

“And that’s when I find out the most delicious secret imaginable! Redblack Jack is a masterful creation by a woman named Portgas D. Rouge! Oho, those children of D. just can’t stop being surprising like that, can they? Especially when it turns out this clever, clever liar is pregnant and the father is the Pirate King about to die!”

Cee laughed loudly, and the laugh transformed from a seal-like bark to a shrieking cackle - like screaming gulls, almost. Over her story, the goddess had shifted again, perhaps unconsciously. Before, from a reef-monkey to a seal-woman, Cee’s body had now grown longer again, plumper still, her hair turned silky though no less green. She looked now not like an inhuman creature, but instead like beautiful, fat young woman who just so happened to be lounging on a dais of water raised against gravity.

“Oho, she was perfect!” Cee said. “Clever and desperate. Everything I needed to win back my power and my lover… and maybe change the world while I was at it. She was at the end of her rope and nearly lost all her allotted importance, but I saw the potential. So I gave her enough rope to either change her fate or hang herself, and she made it out with her victory… and her life!

“And now we’re here… even though by big fish word, she’s not really supposed to be. You can’t feel it, little king, but the winds are changing and the tides are shifting again. Just a touch, and maybe they’ll shift back… but maybe they won’t. Maybe the whole sea’ll change its flow.”

Cee cackled again. “I’ve got a lot riding on her changing up everything! Isn’t it interesting just how much one person shifts the story? How much one clever girl can do even without any important in the eyes of above? I’ve never seen a mortal win back their importance, but if anyone steal back their place in the story, you can bet the world it’ll be ol’ Redblack Jack.

“Children of D. are such dangerous things,” Cee sighed. “Such trouble.”

Then she blinked and looked over towards her captive. “You’ve had little to say, little ki-”

Monkey D. Luffy, who still appeared extremely ill from being trapped in a watery grip, seemed to have fallen asleep. He had his head tilted far back, eyes fluttering as he dozen slightly, mouth wide open and unintentionally adding drool to the giant fist holding him.

“… _Are you listening to me_?” Cee demanded wrathfully, in the way that ought to have been accompanied by a crack of lightning and the ominous swirl of dark clouds behind her head.

Luffy snapped awake as the giant fist shook him slightly, all startled and panicky. “What?!” Then his cheeks blew up and he threw up over the side of his prison, which took a moment, before he yawned and blinked blearily up at the inhuman woman in front of him. “…Who’re you?”

Cee’s wrath vanished as she stared disbelievingly at the boy. “Cee,” she said.

Luffy tilted his head to the side in confusion.

“I kidnapped you,” Cee added.

“Oh,” Luffy said. “Right… LEMME GO, YOU WEIRDO!”

Cee watched in amazement as he started struggling helplessly against her powers again. “Were… were you listening to me…? At all?” she demanded of the seven-year-old boy.

“No,” Luffy said with incredibly brutal honesty. “You’re boring.”

Cee stared at him for a while more, then dragged her face through her hands, flopped back onto her watery dais, and groaned, _“Men.”_

 **“CEE!”** a voice bellowed, with a bone-shaking undertone and heart-seizing rage.

“LUFFY!” a younger voice called desperately, only a second behind.

The goddess turned, then her face lit up with a wide, still inhuman smile. Despite her more human appearance now, she still had a mouth full of yellowed, layered shark teeth. They were all very dangerous-looking… and sharp… and they glinted, like a dare.

On the shore of the bay, Portgas D. Rouge and Portgas D. Ace stood side by side. Rouge with her cane in hand like a blade, expression stolen straight from the World’s Greatest Thief – her familiar will swirled around her like a storm. And Ace, with a pipe in front of him and fierce scowl, had… hmm… maybe the beginnings of a rain shower around him, as his immature, furious will swirled at the edges of and behind his mother’s god-challenging own.

“ACE!” Luffy shouted, squirming with relief, happiness, or still trying to free himself.

“I’m here, Lu! It’s gonna be okay!”

“Oho, the child o’ D. finally returns,” Cee said with gleeful warmth, her pearly eyes almost liquid with it, especially as they passed over the little prince… so much of his parents without ever knowing it. “Or is it _mother_ o’ D. now? Oho!”

Rouge didn’t laugh, or even crack a smile. **“Give my son’s brother back, Cee-san.”**

“We haven’t talked yet, mother o’ D!”

 **“We’ll talk once you return him,”** Rouge said, unwavering despite how she was barely raised from grave. Arrogant mortal. **“This is between us. Him for me, Cee-san, then we’ll deal _properly_.” **

Cee cocked her head, still smiling. “Come and get him, mother o’ D.”

 

 


	12. Love and Devotion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cee reveals to Rouge that things are just beginning.  
> Also, people are rescued. A lot.

Ace threw himself forward, all spitting rage and terrified desperation. “I’ll come and get _you,_ you sick, salty-!”

But Rouge caught him with her cane before he could touch the water of the bay.

Much to her surprise, while predicting Ace was no trouble at all – he was radiating his fury and intentions through his body language alone – stopping him took a few steps of digging herself into the sand and yanking with more strength than she’d been expecting. She was hardly back to her old strength, but she was still formidable enough to give Liz _some –_ extremely, extremely brief – pause while arm-wrestling. Good gods, Ace was _strong._

“Oho! You wanna go, little prince?”

 **“No!”** Rouge snapped, pushing Ace back as gently as she could physically and with her will, stepping in front of him. “This is between us, Cee-san! And I’m not particularly impressed by your choice of invitation for this reunion. I would think it below you to kidnap children because you can.”

The goddess shrugged. “I wanted to meet the family, mother o’ D. This is a feisty pair of royals that you have here! … And the past shows that nothing quite gets you moving like a threat to your crew – you and your lover both, like that.”

“That’s not very patient of you, Cee-san,” Rouge said coolly.

She kept on pushing back on Ace, who kept straining forward, and roamed her eyes over the situation at hand. This was… not good... Cee had given herself all the advantages here.

Cee and Luffy sat about fifty feet from shore, with Cee on a raised dais of water and Luffy held in a watery fist, and neither Rouge nor Luffy could swim. Cee had also shifted form, from her dwarf-sized sea troll to an inhumanly beautiful, fat and powerful woman at least seven feet tall. Even if Cee weren’t a goddess and didn’t have a massive wave of water behind her, which… were those _fish? Ah_ … right, that was a lot of fish there, and Rouge thought she could even feel the muted hum of Sea Kings somewhere out in that writhing mass of water and scales.

So even if Cee weren’t a goddess with a fearsome and unknowable set of powers at her disposal, Rouge wasn’t in any real condition for a fight and Ace and Luffy were only boys. A prolonged or powerful conflict had low chances of survival, much less victory.

Rouge had been trying to reach out to Liz and Grieffe ever since she first felt something off, but Cee’s sudden presence seemed to be preventing that easy solution, and besides, even Rouge would hesitate to lay odds on a match between Bluebeard and Whitecross and a god. Even a spar, much less a serious battle.

“Ten years is a looong time to wait for a talk,” Cee said. “Or, oho, so I’ve heard.”

If this came down to conflict, it would almost certainly be a battle of wits – challenges of strength and direct warring rarely interested most gods, unless someone had laid down a particularly fascinating set of rules of engagement. If all Cee wanted was an actual talk, fine – they had parted on good terms, perhaps this would only be a talk – and if Cee wanted to riddle and deal… Rouge could do that.

“Then let’s talk, Cee-san. But please return Luffy to Ace, first.”

Cee cocked her head. “Come and get him, mother o’ D.”

Corresponding to Cee’s challenge, several rocks rose out of the bay in a stepping stone path to the goddess. Each one was large and smooth, as though summoned from the depths of the ocean at the goddess’ whim, and supported by dozens of enormous fish. It was a very casual use of incredible power and quite the invitation.

Rouge narrowed her eyes at Cee, who raised her eyebrows in response.

“Please stay here,” Rouge said to Ace, finally moving her cane and straightening to her full height. She kept her eyes on the goddess and her guest; so this was how it was, then. “I will be back soon with your brother.”

Ace gave her a distrustful scowl and made an indignant noise of objection, trying to argue without an argument. Too angry and terrified to make one, it seemed; Rouge had seen that expression on many a crewmember’s face – even Liz and Grieffe’s once upon a time. She’d worn it herself, when too overcome with the importance of what was at stake.

Rouge took her eyes fully off Cee and leaned down to smile at Ace.

“Don’t worry,” she said, voice quiet and without a trace of Haki. “I’ve done this sort of thing before, you know. I’ll be back soon with your brother.” Then she dropped her volume even further. “Whatever it takes.”

Ace stared at her, his eyes widening. He still looked disbelieving and suspicious, but the scowl was gone in favor of something more considering. Not exactly hopeful, but… close enough.

It was absolutely endearing. Rouge reached out to him before she remembered that she did not have permission or the position to touch him, and curled her fingers in and drew her hands back before she could touch his thin shoulders. She smiled at him instead, clenched her cane and a fist, and hoped that her face hadn’t faltered in between actions.

“I’m a pirate, remember?” she said. “And I am a very good pirate too, if I do say so.”

And then she stood and turned away, Ace’s slightly stunned expression stuck in her memory, and walked into light waves lapping at the shore of the bay. The first touch of seawater sent a horrible shiver down her spine, but she kept on and kept her face straight. Rouge kept her son’s untrusting hope in her mind and ignored hundreds of memories of drowning – seizing and going limp in the water, lungs filling against a supposedly indomitable will, and being dragged into the dark.

“This is almost quite rude of you, you know, Cee-san,” Rouge commented absentmindedly. A numb feeling was spreading through her limbs as she waded, her paces more sluggish as the water reached her shins. The nearest rock wasn’t far, but it was far enough to be annoying. A nearly offensive amount of Rouge’s concentration was going towards not tripping and accidentally killing herself.

Cee just looked amused and Rouge knew the goddess had done this on purpose. “Eh? What’s that, mother o’ D? Scared of a little water? Oho, that’s embarrassing!”

“Not at all, Cee-san. I simply thought you were bigger than a knee-deep wading pool, that’s all.”

Cee’s only answer was to break into cackles. Rouge grit her teeth.

But then the water between Rouge and the rock parted slightly, creating an ankle-deep path, and Rouge obligingly hurried along and clambered onto the first stepping stone. She was usually more stubborn than obliging, but she really did hate wading through water.

Rouge stood tall, cane sturdy in her hand, and ignored the way the wet hem of her sundress dripped onto the smooth rock. She remained unperturbed as the enormous fish shifted the stone closer to the next one – weak-willed, easily controlled creatures were just as easily scared off by battles of wills – and did not falter when the stone dropped into the water as soon as she stepped off it.

Ace’s sudden alarm almost made her turn around, but she restrained herself. Luffy’s own alarm and faint terror was equally as awful; the watery grip that Cee had him in had to be terrible. It could not be comforting to see the only escape route drop away.

Rouge projected steady calm to both boys as clearly as she could. “So, what is this talk about, Cee-san, my gracious host?”

“Oho, well, you took so long coming back, I almost forgot to welcome you back,” Cee said, relaxing on her watery dais, grin getting wider as Rouge approached her and Luffy. “And I need to congratulate you for getting one over ol’ Ugly, of course. That was just a joy to watch, mother o’ D.”

 _Forty feet… thirty-five feet… thirty feet…_ “Why, thank you, Cee-san.”

“Not so much a joy to endure, though – oho?”

“It was certainly a unique experience,” Rouge agreed blandly.

How to begin to explain the experience of the Game? Exhilarating was a good word, with a challenge like nothing she had ever faced before, with the constant feeling of being a breath from death. No significant strength, no crew and no allies, no mortal or human opponents… only her wits and will to see her through an almost impossible task. It had been horrible and fantastic – in every possible meaning of the words.

Cee cackled again, that seagulls-shrieking laugh. “Oho! Unique isn’t the half of it!”

“I suppose not,” Rouge said, reaching the last rock that Cee had called up.

Even lounging, the goddess on her dais was taller than her, and Rouge seemed small and stranded in comparison.

“Please return Luffy now, Cee-san.”

The boy was held far out of reach, and asking was only polite.

“He looks quite tired from all this excitement.”

“Oho, mother of D., no need for reprimanding,” Cee said mulishly, and the watery fist lowered down to Rouge’s level. “I just wanted to meet the family – these important little babes of yours.”

As soon as the water was within a foot of Rouge, holding Luffy in front of and just above her, it burst. Rouge let her cane drop to her feet and opened her arms, receiving a face full of salt water and a limp, exhausted seven-year-old boy. She stumbled slightly, partly from the awkwardness of the catch and partly from the water, but stayed firm and shifted Luffy more comfortably in her grip.

His legs went around her waist, ledged on her hip, while his arms went around her neck and he buried his face against her hair. Luffy clung as well as he could, but his fingers had no grip and he mostly sagged. His skin was cold and wet to the touch, and he was shivering uncontrollably.

“… _really_ don’t like water…” Luffy murmured into her wetted hair.  

Rouge hugged him tight, with the same level of love and affection she’d wanted to give to Ace. He felt so small in her grip, even though she wasn’t very big herself. She didn’t know him yet, but she didn’t really know Ace either, and… well… she’d meant what she’d said to Ace. Any brother of her son was a son of hers. This sunny boy called Ace brother and loved him – that was absolutely lovable.

“Me either,” she murmured back. “Our Devil Fruits make it so tricky, don’t they?”

A cheery warble overrode Luffy’s tired groan of agreement.

“Oho, isn’t that cute!”

Rouge looked back to Cee, glaring slightly. She could feel tremors going through every inch of Luffy, and he was both holding her as though trying to absorb her warmth and as though he didn’t have the strength to stand on his own feet. Forcibly keeping Devil Fruit users in water was cruel – there were many methods of using water against Devil Fruit users as torture, especially as an “enhanced interrogation” technique.

Cee wasn’t fazed in the slightest by Rouge’s look, and her sharp smile stayed right where it was. “Oho, calm down, mother o’ D., I’m not gonna hurt you or your babe.”

Rouge bit back a smart response to this. Her fingers itched for her daggers.

“Don’t you worry,” Cee said, shifting on her watery bed. “I can’t really touch either babe. They’ve both got threads that cross too many others, and important other threads at that. Big fish can barely nip at their heels, much less bite. You can’t know how much trouble I’m in just for holding that little king still for as long as I did.”

 _Good, I don’t care,_ Rouge thought briefly, through the overwhelming relief that almost took her out at the knees. The relief took a lot of snarl out of her and that vengeful thought.

It was so very relieving to know that gods could not touch her son or his brother – that their importance would keep immortals that directly interfering with their lives. Gods could do such fearsome things on frighteningly brief whims. The boys were safe – _safe, unlike the third brother, who may have been taken as revenge against her victory_ – and Rouge would not be made a liar to Ace.

“My sympathies, Cee-san,” Rouge said. “I would have made introductions on my own, had you approached me and not my son and his brother.”

“Oho! Cold sympathy!” Cee cackled again. “I’m touched, mother o’ D., really, I am. But I know the Rules, and the rules about swimming into nests to toy with a mother’s younglings – I know the price of my playing.” The goddess sighed, the stretched and sat up to rest on her knees. “I didn’t come here for your royal babes, anyway.”

“Your welcome and congratulations are appreciated, Cee-san.”

Cee shook her head, legs dipping into the water as she stood to her full height. She had grown some over the course of the conversation, and especially as she stood, and Cee then towered over Rouge at nine feet tall and outsized her several times over. Her dress of weeds and shells had shifted into a barely fitting skirt, showing much golden-toned brown skin with only a few barnacles here and there, and her blackish green hair was as long as she was tall. A few fish wriggled out of her hair as she ran her long fingers through it.

She looked incredibly gorgeous, in that massive, pearl-eyed, sea goddess sort of way. Intimidating and inhuman, yes, but still beautiful in the way that could only comfortably be observed from a distance. She seemed to have given up on the sea troll form and Rouge didn’t know what to think of that. Cee had only shown this form to her once, when they parted ten years ago.

“Oho, not just those, mother o’ D,” Cee said, staring down at her with glinting eyes and teeth. “I’m also here with a warning – a warning in good faith and friendship, after the favors you did me. I like you like that, you see. I’m nice like that.”

“As kind as your liquid counterpart,” Rouge agreed, her limbs numbing from more than water and cold. She doubted that a goddess would show up in person to deliver a warning unless it was significantly dire. Congratulations and welcome alone, perhaps, but a warning…?

Cee laughed again, and it did not sound at all humorous this time.

“Fish from other seas are listening in on us,” the goddess said wryly, and Rouge suddenly noticed that the enormous waiting wave was moving forward into the bay. “Oho, well, they have ears listening in for them, the lazy smilers. Mother of D., this’ll have to be a warning delivered in private.”

Rouge took a step back, holding Luffy tighter, and realized suddenly that the rock she was standing on was sinking into waters that were swirling unnaturally around them. The only upside was that it was sinking much slower than the wave behind Cee was approaching, moving fast and with a somewhat terrifying amount of scales and fins writhing inside.

“Cee-san, I do n-”

The goddess just kept grinning, and advised, “Hold your breath, mother o’ D.”

Rouge didn’t stay still to watch Cee get swallowed by her own wave. She turned and yanked and stepped and _threw._ She ignored balance and restraints, using every bit of strength and determination in her weakened, technically undead body to heave Luffy at the bright beacon of rage and fear that was Ace at the bay’s shore.

She would have preferred her first interaction with Luffy to be something other than throwing him fifty feet to safety, before falling face-first into water and swallowed by a massive, godly wave, but it was at least better than drowning with him. Rouge only had time to see that Luffy – understandably startled and screaming – would reach safety and catch a glimpse of Ace’s horrified expression, before the water swallowed her down and smashed down over her all at once. 

 

**{12}**

 

It was cold and seizing, exactly like all her nightmares and memories, and infused with power that echoed through the skin and down deep into the bones. Underwater rapids tossed her about, head over heels, at Cee’s godly whims and poor sense of what exactly _help_ was.

The only upside was that despite the scales that flashed in front of her eyes, Rouge didn’t hit or collide with or get smacked by a single writhing fish. At least, she was fairly certain. It was hard to tell.

Rouge was soon, although not nearly soon enough, spat out onto… solid water. It looked like water, it rippled where she touched it, but she did not fall into it. Rouge adapted to the flooring, regulated her gasping breaths, and immediately looked around at the underwater bubble she seemed to be sitting in.

The sphere-like shape was no more than ten feet in diameter and in all directions she could not see a thing beyond circling fish, swirling water, and the enormous rocks that had been used as stepping stones. It was very… contained… and tightly so, in a very wild way. The bubble thrummed with power, gurgling with a familiar, salty-tasting, godly aura, and glowing with light despite the complete lack of sunlight – very protective and very private.

Rouge wobbled to her feet – the seemingly solid water beneath her was barely leeching at her and she’d be damned be she stayed down – and narrowed her eyes at it all. She did not appreciate being tossed about or almost drowned, but she liked even less being _contained._

“Cee-san,” Rouge said as calmly as calm could be, “there are much nicer ways of inviting your guests into a private conversation. Ace and Luffy will be frightened.”

She could not feel them now, nor anything besides the gush and hum of power around her, but Ace’s horrified look was quite fresh in her mind.

“That was entirely unnecessary.”

“Ehe,” said Cee’s disembodied voice, “Fear is good for them.”

The fish surrounding her suddenly scattered wide and the rocks slowly dropped away, parting for the enormous face, at least a hundred times Rouge's size, that loomed seemingly out of nowhere. Cee smiled a smile that was large enough to swallow House Royale, each of her sharp shark teeth taller than a grown man and her pearly eyes demanding an oyster the side of an island. Then the rest of the goddess loomed out of the black waters all around. Enormous strands of green, sea-grass hair drifted all around her face and by the bubble. Like tentacles of the mother of all krakens.

A massive neck and shoulders stretched and settled into being, followed by long, massive arms that reached out of the dark and seemed to go on forever until ship-holding-sized hands appeared for the goddess to settle her chin into. The last of Cee stretched out into the blackness, mostly shadowed but clearly greater than a giant and rivalling any Sea King under her power.

Now that the fish had scattered and the rocks dropped away, around the bubble, Rouge could see… water and darkness as far as she could see. No sunlight, no sand, no rocky bottom. Just ocean that went on and on. Just water, still and void of all else, except for a sea goddess the size of a mountain resting on nothing at all, and Rouge in a tiny glowing bubble in front of Cee’s nose.

Rouge was so small in comparison – strikingly so. A small dot of life in what seemed like an endless expanse of black, surrounded by something that would leave her helpless and quickly dead as soon as she tried to leave. It reminded her, quite exactly, of most of her time spent in God’s Blue.

Perhaps they were. They were clearly not in a small bay on Dawn Island anymore.

“I’m afraid I must disagree,” Rouge said flatly.

Cee thankfully didn’t laugh, the vibrations of which probably would have felt like a small earthquake at this size and distance, but her grin grew inhumanly wider. At this size, it was… striking.

“Mother o’ D., you’re such fun,” Cee said fondly. “You don’t really understand how much fun you are. We don’t usually get to play with the strong and adventurous ones, see, and the ones as clever as you are usually too smart to draw attention or involve themselves with the big fish.”

“I’ve always been too clever and curious for my own good,” Rouge agreed. She felt wary and did not like the direction this conversation was taking. “If that is your warning, I am already well aware.”

“No… no… not well enough,” Cee murmured, eyes gleaming. “See, mother o’ D., you might consider yourself done with the big fish… but the big fish don’t consider themselves done with you. Not in the slightest. Even if ol’ Jonesy weren’t the type to hold a grudge, it’s not nothing when a mortal marked for death wins a battle of wits with a god.”

Rouge resisted a shiver, a gasp, or even just fainting dead away. “It’s in my wager that I can’t be killed, injured, or intentionally or knowingly interfered with at all,” she objected. “He cannot touch me. A victory that only needs to be won once: that was our bargain.”

“Oho, don’t we all know. But even scummy bottom-dwellers have friends, clever girl, and ugly ol’ Jonesy is still spittin’ mad with a few favors to call in. _He_ cannot touch you, but Rules are rules, and that greedy ship-scavenger can’t agree on behalf of all the smilers.”

Cee tilted her enormous head and sent her hair drifting about like passing waves. “You do your thinking, mother o’ D., think hard and think quick. And I’ll start this story from where you last left us off – ten years ago on your deathbed. I’m nice like that, oho? And I’m in a bit of a story mood today, besides – my last listener wasn’t _listening_ and that’s gotta be remedied _._

“When you stole for me, mother of D., I didn’t much care what happened to you next. I wanted my power and my lover back, and had my fingers crossed you’d embarrass ol’ Ugly, but it was no barnacle off my back if you didn’t win your bet. Oho, I’ll be honest…” Cee said, her wide smile dropping in favor of a cool, studying look. “I thought you were a silly mortal trying to have the impossible, playing the Game with a sneaky dead-man like ol’ Jonesy like that. I didn’t think you’d win.”

Then Cee slid into a wide smile again. “But you did… You won! And wasn’t it the shock of the whole Host when you did. …The loser of it all especially. I’m never gonna forget his fury – that tantrum was almost enough to stop me from taking my own revenge – and oho, his _rage_ when the Host reminded him he couldn’t cast you into hell for winning and had to uphold his side of your bargain…

“But that’s the downside, mother o’ D., you caught the eyes of the whole Host of smilers. You got their attention, both the good and the neutral and the bad. … Mostly bad, the rest mostly neutral. It was a big thing you did, no backing of importance from the Threadder while at it, and there’s more than a few out there wondering if you can do similar… or bigger.

“You’re a wild card, Portgas D. Rouge. And unless you can get your importance back, there’s a whole Host of smilers who can touch you wherever you run and kill you with a wave of their hand. … But that’s such a waste of opportunity, don’t you think?”

It was a good thing that the question was rhetorical, because Rouge could not have answered even if it wasn’t. Her opinions were incoherent and her thoughts more or less amounted to a prolonged scream. There had been no appearances of other gods, either for her challenge or the Game itself – no sign or mention of them, before or after. She had only ever met Cee and the god she’d stolen from.

“Ugly ol’ Jonesy held onto you because he’s scum,” Cee continued, her smile wide enough to swallow ships whole again, masts and all. “But that’s a bad thing that might’ve been good for you. Because it gave the smilers time to forget about you… and it gave me time to think. It’s been ten years, after all, and things change. Life goes on.

“And recently, I was thinking that I could use a wild card… a clever little sneak-thief like you.” Cee’s smile became sharper – her shark teeth growing longer, more teeth growing from her enormous gums, and all of it glinting terribly in the bubble’s faint light. “None of those smilers have dared to fuck with me after what you and I did to ol’ Ugly – they couldn’t half-manage if they had the brain and guts to _try_ to fuck with me.

“But I’ve got some little fish that I’m quite fond of. Not much importance between them, none as strong to challenge the world, none clever enough to fool it completely, none as charismatic to catch the whole world’s eyes. I couldn’t help them all myself even if I wanted to.”

“…You want a favor,” Rouge said numbly.

“I want a favor, clever girl,” Cee agreed, “and I’ll do you a favor in turn.”

“This… warning isn’t nearly enough for your mostly undescribed and open-ended favor, Cee-san,” Rouge said. Alright… okay… good… there was a way out of this… there were options. Rouge could deal with a goddess again. Repeat clients were the best clients.

“Oho, no, this is just me opening business on a good fin. That and showing my appreciation for you completely embarrassing ol’ Ugly. Think of it as an extension of me forcing him to let you go in the first place. I can’t negotiate with a dead mortal, you know.”

“If… if this is your good fin, Cee-san, I would hate to see your bad one.”

“Let’s hope you don’t, mother o’ D.,” Cee said coolly, before her tone turned light and open again. “My favor is what I’d be asking of you: a little tender care and protection. Think of me as a benefactor, one who’d keep the other big fish from sending whirlpools your way… until you can get your importance back and the Rules come into play.”

Rouge ran over her knowledge of the Rules in her head, quite in depth and somewhat rusty but still quite sharp. “You want to… sponsor me,” she said. “Can you do that when I get my… importance back?”

“Oho, I like the ‘when’ there, mother of D!”

 _Of course it’s a when._ Even if Rouge wasn’t planning on interfering greatly with the lives of Ace and Dragon’s son, and distantly quite a bit more, she wasn’t the sort to let herself stay at the mercy of powerful, interested parties. That wasn’t the sort of thing to leave to an _if._

“And yes,” Cee continued, her smile slightly knowing. “There’s enough time for us to bend the Rules here, although oho, my ability to send friendly winds your way will end at that _when._ Not that I’ll be inclined to. My favor doesn’t come with favor, clever girl, I don’t work that way.”

“I wouldn’t want you to, Cee-san.”

“Oho, clever girl.”

“ _I_ know how business works between us, Cee-san.”

“Mmhmm. The most important thing about this, mother o’ D., is that any big fish looking to mess with you on ol’ Ugly’s behalf has got to go through me – I can’t stop them, not completely, but it’s got to be a proper challenge and I can check for funny business.”

“Well,” Rouge said slowly, “I have never considered hiring a goddess as my lawyer before.”

“Oho! Familiar with lawyers, you sneak-thief?”

“Somewhat.”

Rouge hadn’t really had much need for a lawyer herself ever, but several of her crewmates and crewmembers had had their own legal troubles and business to sort through occasionally. Liz’s second Opie for instance, or even the more unexpected like Mary or Grieffe. They were quite useful, what with the differing laws between the Blues and from kingdom to queendom to island.

Rouge had also impersonated lawyers many times. But she wasn’t sure that counted.

“Cee-san, I-”

“Calm down, mother o’ D., you have time.”

“…Pardon me.”

Cee laughed, a throaty chuckle that sent ripples through the bubble. “You have three days to decide on my deal. I have much more power than I did and you’ve got some time before memories start stirring again and ol’ Jonesy comes creeping out again. Three days to think it over and out.”

Well, then. Rouge certainly appreciated that sentiment, but… “Why?”

“Old Rules,” Cee said, tilting her massive head again and grimacing. “Annoying things. I have to give you three sunsets for this one. Deals are one thing… but this is a little bit more than a deal.”

Rouge narrowed her eyes. “This sponsoring doesn’t come with other orders or favors.”

“Oho, no, suspicious mother o’ D. You do your thing and I do mine, and we both do each other’s favors. That’s all there is to it. But tradition’s tradition, and I have to give you three days to do your thinking… talking… whatever it is that you mortals do.”

“And if I take this… offer, then am I likely to attract more… attention?”

Cee grinned and said, “Probably.”

“Challenges?”

“Better than an unexpected, unsolicited, unstoppable whirlpool, oho?”

Rouge grimaced at that, because it was annoyingly true. “And how long am I expected to protect your ‘little fish’? How many mortals across the Blues have caught your eye? I will not be held on retainer my whole life, Cee-san.”

“It’s collective, basic watch, and as long as it takes you to get your importance back,” Cee said. “I prefer we leave the details for later. That’s not too much to ask, is it?”

“So long as you have answers for me next meeting, I will have an answer for you.”

“Oho, sounds about fair, m-”

Cee paused and tilted her head, as though listening for something. “Oho…?” Then her grin turned absolutely gleeful. "O _ho!"_

“…Pardon me?” said Rouge.

 

**{12}**

 

Ace watched, heart in his throat and blocking a scream, as the massive wave loomed forward. He saw the lying woman, who didn’t seem to be such a liar after all, get swallowed by the water. He saw the “Cee” goddess melt into her monstrous wave. And he dropped his pipe and opened his arms wide to catch Luffy, flying through the air towards them, screaming at the top of his lungs.

Ace didn’t so much catch his brother as Luffy collided with him. There was a hard smack and a high shriek, and then both boys went down in the sand in a pile of wet limbs and wheezing for air. Ace grit his teeth as his head pounded with pain at the knock and Luffy groaned.

The heavy wave that splashed over them struck Ace out of his daze like a slap to the face. Luffy seized and went limp again, but Ace shoved them both into a sitting position, spitting and sputtering as the last of the massive wave receded back into the bay. He held Luffy tight, slippery and soaked limbs be damned, already ready to flee for safety, and looked around.

Ace’s panting turned into a sharp breath as he realized the water of the bay had, with some splashing and soaking of the jungle, returned to normal. There was no dais, no more watery fists, no massive wave waiting in the background. Another wave washed over their laps, but beyond that, the bay was settling suspiciously quickly. There was no sign of the supposed goddess or Ace’s supposed mother, not even a whisper over the calming swirl of the waters.

Ace turned back to his brother, pulling him away from the shoreline and prodding at him for injuries and wakefulness. “Lu! Lu! Luffy! Luffy, wake up!” He seemed to be alright, if the weak swatting and garbled mumble for five more minutes was a sign of anything. “LUFFY, WAKE UP!”

Luffy groaned and ended up coughing painfully. Ace held him close, rubbed his brother’s thin, shuddering shoulders, and dragged the both of them towards the trees. They were both stumbling in the sand and Luffy was being carried more than walking.

Ace peered anxiously towards the darkening green. The sun was close to setting now, in the late summer way that meant it was later than it looked, and the jungle at night was dangerous. But they had to get out of here. They had to get away from the water, away from the sea, away from the “Cee” goddess that tossed waves wherever she wanted. Somewhere high, somewhere safe.

“Ah-ace? Ace, where’re we going?” Luffy asked, stifling coughs and trying to look all around.

“Away from here,” Ace said determinedly.

“Where’s your mom?”

Ace grit his teeth and didn’t answer, instead trying to think of a way out of all this. The woman and the goddess were gone – off talking business or drowning or something – and Ace wasn’t going to try and get in the way or get involved with that. She’d said she could handle herself.

“She’s in the _water?”_ Luffy realized, eyes wide with horror as he looked back towards the bay. For the first time, he fought his elder brother as Ace tried to drag them both into the treeline. He freed himself and tried to go back. “Ace, we hafta go get her!”

“You can’t swim, dummy!” Ace said, grabbing Luffy’s arm and pulling.

“But she needs help!” Luffy insisted, and Ace’s tugging only caused Luffy’s limbs to stretch. “Ace! ACE! LEMME GO!”

Ace yanked on Luffy’s stretching, six-foot-long arm to basically no success, it was a tug-o-war standstill.

“She can help herself!” he snapped, worried and exhausted and _angry_ that this had ever happened at all. “She said so! Said she’s a pirate! What kind of pirate can’t even swim?”

“ME!” Luffy shouted, then he twisted, drew back his free arm, and punched forward. “GOMU GOMU NO PISTOL!”

The rubber fist caught Ace right across the jaw. It didn’t send him flying or anything, but it was a hell of a lot more solid and direct than anything Luffy had thrown his way before. It surprised Ace more than it hurt, but it _did_ hurt. And it was more than enough for Ace to stumble back against a tree trunk and release Luffy’s arm.

Dazedly, jaw aching, Ace blinked after his little brother fumbling through the jungle brush towards the water again. “LU! LUFFY, STOP!” he shouted, scrambling up and knocking his head against a knot. “Ow, stupid hell- LUFFY! Luffy, you dummy, you can’t swim! GET AWAY FROM THERE!”

“She can’t swim either!”

Ace sprinted and tackled Luffy into the sand of the bay. “And what’re you gonna do? Drown with her? Even if you didn’t sink, you don’t know how!” Ace fought to grab Luffy’s flailing arms by the wrists, pinned those day, and then _sat_ on his brother.

“Ace, get off!”

“No! We’re _going._ That creature kidnapped you, Lu!” Ace reminded his obviously, _empty-headed_ brother. “Use your head, what do you think you can do against that?!”

 _What do you think_ I _can do against that?_

Luffy looked up at him with huge eyes and said, “Try.”

Ace blinked. _What?_

“She’s drowning, Ace! She _saved_ me! We’ve got to do _something!_ ” Luffy said. Then, tilting his head in the sand, he added urgently, “Ace, she’s got a Devil Fruit too! She _can’t_ swim!”

“…She what?”

“Ace, you have to do something!”

“I can’t, Lu, it’s too dangerous! What could I even d-?” Ace paused in the middle of his demand, sliding off his little brother and into the sand, thinking hard and quick.

He didn’t want the woman to die, even if she was a liar. She’d saved Luffy, traded herself for him.

But maybe it wasn’t a question of what he could do. Maybe it was a question of what the “Cee” goddess _couldn’t do._ The woman had said that gods had rules of some kind, which kept them from interacting with humans, which kept Luffy and Ace safe from them. Cee had even confirmed it in front of him, when the woman had been getting Luffy back.

_(“You can’t know how much trouble I’m in just for holding that little king still for as long as I did.”)_

This whole situation reeked of danger and a league that Ace could tell he wasn’t in, even as much as it grated at him. This _was_ dangerous, filled with dangerous women and goddesses, but… maybe they weren’t in as much danger as he’d thought.

Was he panicking? Running without actual reason to? When had he gotten so cowardly? He was so distracted by the possibility of losing his only brother left that maybe he hadn’t been thinking straight. So scared of losing Luffy that he hadn’t cared about anything or anyone else.

What if the woman _was_ his mother? His mother who had died to let him be born – however she had done it – and whose name kept him safe. His mother who had come back to him through impossible means and impossible tasks against inhuman powers. His mother who was apparently a pirate and a thief and had a whole life and history that he’d never heard of.

His mother who had immediately claimed Luffy as family and handed herself over in his stead without any hesitation. Even when she might not have the same protections they did – Ace didn’t think there were any rules protecting the woman – it hadn’t sounded like it.

“…Fuck,” Ace said, finally.

“What?”

Ace looked towards the calmed waters of the bay, without a sign of anything under the surface. He reluctantly stood and then looked back to Luffy, expression as firm as he could make it and pointing with a shaking finger.

“Don’t you _dare_ try to come after me, Lu. You _can’t_ swim.”

 

**{12}**

 

“Oho! Well, it seems like you’re getting a rescue, if I know my ripples right.”

Rouge blinked, quite against her will, and repeated, “…Pardon me?”

Had her feelings of distress reached Liz? Had Grieffe, with all her sharp senses, managed to catch on to Cee’s powerful but elusive aura? Had Ace and Luffy managed to find her first mate and gunmaster? And told them that Rouge had been swallowed by a wave and taken by a goddess?

“It seems your son likes you more than he showed,” Cee said, her grin undeservedly smug.

 _Ace?_ Rouge thought, bewildered. Ace had called her a liar, refused to believe she was his mother, and been rightfully angry and suspicious by her appearance. Ace’s concern was for Luffy, not for her.

“I hardly need rescuing, Cee-san,” Rouge said, mostly for lack of anything else to say.

It was also partly a pointed reminder, hopefully stopping any of the goddess’ mischief before it started, because despite appearances, Rouge actually _didn’t_ need a rescue. As the host for this meeting, it was against the Rules for Cee to harm her guests or do anything but see her guests out safely.

“Oho, mother o’ D., that’s no fun.”

Rouge almost shut her eyes and clenched her jaw in dismay. Instead, she just clenched her jaw and watched as all those enormous fish hurried out of the dark again, swimming as quickly as they’d scattered. They started to circle the bubble, rushing and writhing, and Rouge focused on keeping her breathing calm.

She glared at Cee, who was barely visible between the scales and the fins.

“Why deny him the opportunity?” the goddess said, voice becoming disembodied as the last of her disappeared and the surface of the bubble rippled and bulged. “I also thought, oho, that you’d be the sort to indulge your babes and spoil ‘em rotten.”

The worst part about that last statement, was that Rouge was fairly certain that the goddess wasn’t at all wrong. “Cee-san, you are a marvel."

_Sometimes I hate you._

“Oho! Feeling’s mutual, clever girl,” Cee cackled. “Hold your breath.”

 

**{12}**

 

“You seen anything yet?”

“Luffy, shut up!” Ace shouted back towards the shore. “No, I haven’t!”

He took another deep breath and then dove back underwater. He’d never gone swimming in this bay before and didn’t know his way around, but it was a lot deeper and a lot emptier than he thought it should be. It was surprisingly dark and hard to see, and of what he could see there wasn't anything besides weeds and rocks.

It was a flash of light that finally caught his eye, and he nearly jumped out of his skin when a fish twice his size brushed past him in its hurry towards the faint glow. A second later, the water was full of fish of all sorts of shapes and sizes – all bigger than him but none interested. They were all headed towards the light and Ace quickly resurfaced to catch his breath back.

Luffy, sitting cross-legged on the shore, called out urgently again, “You seen anything yet?”

“No!” Ace shouted back again, and dived back down.

He didn’t know what to do about the fish. They were kind of freaking him out and, despite being fully prepared to, he didn’t know what punching any of them would do if they felt hungry. They looked like the “Cee” goddess’ fish, though, so he swam down and peered at the strange circling motion they were doing. A mass of scales and fins were swimming tight around the small light.

Then there was a shockwave through the water, one that the enormous fish all scattered on. Ace raised his arms to protect himself, but found himself flipping head over heels as they all rushed past him and away. When he opened his eyes again, the fish were all gone, the light was gone, and he was alone under the water again. It was once he righted himself and peered through the darkness, that he spotted the floating figure that had been left behind.

Portgas D. Rouge stared back at him with wide eyes, her blonde hair and blue sundress flowing around her. She should have looked pretty, but her expression was more panicked than anything else and Ace recognized that combination of seizing and limpness from when Luffy forgot he couldn’t swim. And she looked… she looked a lot thinner and sicker than she had before.

Ace saw the bubbles leaving her mouth, slightly open and unable to close, and hurried towards her. Her eyes closed before he reached her, more bubbles leaving. Ace grabbed the nearest limb he could reach and tugged her by the arm towards the surface with all the strength he had. He didn’t need much – she was almost scarily light.

Ace broke the surface with a gasp and he hurriedly tugged the woman up too. Luffy’s repetitive question turned into an excited whoop as Rouge coughed and sputtered for air, her eyes still closed and her face lined with exhaustion. It was really awkward, keeping her afloat, since Ace was smaller than she was, but with a bit of flailed splashing, he managed to pull one of her limp arms around his neck and start kicking towards the shore again.

 _Today,_ Ace thought unhappily, _has not been a good day._ And to kick it all off, they’d missed dinner to deal with all this stupid shit – like meeting his maybe-mom who was maybe-undead, and rescuing Luffy from a maybe-goddess – and he was really hungry. _This sucked._

“Ace! Look out!”

At Luffy’s shout, Ace looked up to see the water in front of them bubbling upwards, like a massive spring or a city fountain. In front of his wide eyes, the water rose and rose. The higher parts shifting in color and form until the enormous “Cee” goddess was between him and the shore.

She was still almost ten feet tall, fat and powerful like a hippo or an elephant, with a mouth full of monster teeth and weird, all-pale eyes. Her bottom half was more water than person and it was almost nauseating to look at. She grinned down at him and Rouge, looming over them both, and spoke: 

“Believe in the big fish now, little prince?”

Ace gaped – he didn’t know what to say, he didn’t know what to _do._ He was frozen treading water, doing his utmost to keep the limp woman next to him afloat, looking up at something unmistakably dangerous. It had been so much easier to dive into the water without her there, to think to himself when alone: _You can’t touch me, you said so yourself._

The “Cee” goddess’ grin grew inhumanly wider and she opened her mouth to say something else.

But then there was a rush of air, the sound of something travelling faster than the eye could blink and making its own wind and clap through the air. And Ace gaped up to see the purple-haired, brown-skinned woman from before – tall and muscular and sharp – in the air by the goddess’ shoulder. She had two swords drawn and at the end of a paired slash, the light glinting almost sharp enough to cut off the pitch black blades. The light glinted sharply off her sunglasses as well, and behind them she looked furious. Ace followed the line of her rage to notice that there was a... space between Cee's enormous head and massive neck.

Then the the purple-haired woman blurred, spinning in the thundering air, and kicked the “Cee” goddess’ decapitated head straight off her neck. Cee's head, mouth still open and eyes still fixed on Ace, disappeared so fast that it blurred too - kicked straight out to sea in a split-second whirl. Gone. Off into the horizon.

And in the same second, the blurring woman disappeared too. Ace felt and heard the air rush as she moved around them too fast to see, then watched with wide eyes as the half-giant, half-water body in front of him fell apart into neatly slashed pieces that cut clean through. _Fell apart._ Like it'd been minced and diced and sliced in every which way. No guts, no blood, the pieces melted back into the water they’d been formed from as the world deafeningly cracked and rumbled. 

When Ace blinked next, a solid force had yanked him into its arms, and before he really knew what was happening, he was back on the shore again. Overbalanced as soon as he was released, he fell backwards onto his butt in the sand, dazed and dripping. He looked to the side, where Luffy was sitting and gaping at something in front of them, and then he looked up at the person who had just cut up a goddess and carried him back to shore in about five seconds.

The purple-haired woman wasn’t paying him much attention. She was nearly completely dry, her swords sheathed at her hip, and she only had fond eyes for the soaked blonde woman in a bridal carry in her scarred arms, who was coughing and dripping on her.

“For fuck’s sake, Rouge,” the swordswoman said. “I can’t leave you alone for five fucking minutes.”

Rouge groaned, lifting a wet, freckled arm to clumsily pat the other woman on the cheek. “Thank you, Liz, but we had that entirely under control,” Rouge said wearily, ignoring Liz’s derisive snort. “That was Cee, by the way, whom you just beheaded as a parting. I have to do business with her, you know.”

“Cee? ...Huh. Well, if she died from that, she’s a pretty shitty immortal,” the purple-haired woman answered. Then her careless tone turned immoveable and serious. “And we’re gonna have a talk later, you and me, about you runnin’ off and doing more fucking business with creeps like that.”

“Fine, fine,” Rouge agreed, dropping her hand back into her lap. She looked over at Ace and Luffy, smiling a little weakly. Maybe it had been a trick of the light or the effect of the seawater, but she looked much healthier now – less sallow, less thin, generally brighter. “Thank you for coming in after me, Ace. I'm very grateful. Hello again, Luffy, are you feeling better now?”

“Y-yeah,” Luffy said shakily, still gaping at the purple-haired woman.

Ace felt similarly.

Stunned. Yeah, stunned might have been a good word for it.

“We haven’t officially met yet. My name is Portgas D. Rouge – I’m Ace’s birth mother. You already know Liz, here.” She patted a hand against the purple-haired woman’s chest. “Ace, this is Baiebleu Eliza, my first mate, and best and longest friend.”

“Call me Liz,” the purple-haired woman said. “Nice to finally and officially meet you, brat.”

“Uh… hello,” Ace managed, still staring.

Liz nodded, a smirk tugging at her lips for some reason. “Right,” she said. “So, we’re all getting the hell out of here, right now. Up and at ‘em, boys.” And as they hurried to obey, she asked wryly, “You all right there, kid?”

“I’m fine!” Luffy insisted, as he fell over for the second time.

Ace hurried to help his little brother to his feet and Liz walked over to them. As soon as Ace had Luffy upright, Liz bent over in front of Luffy, Rouge still comfortably in her arms, and said:

“Rouge, grab.”

Rouge reached out and scooped a surprised Luffy into her arms, settling him on her lap and torso as Liz straightened. The tall, purple-haired swordswoman didn’t seem to notice the extra weight of Luffy at all. She didn’t even seem to notice Rouge’s weight, really. Then she turned purple eyes on Ace and turned around, bending her knees slightly.

“Alright, brat,” she said. “Climb. Come on, up on the shoulders, I don’t have all day.”

Ace… wasn’t especially comfortable with that. He didn’t like being carried or pulled about, at all, and couldn’t honestly remember the last time someone had been lugging him about instead of him lugging them about. He would object, really, except Luffy was peeking expectantly over a broad, scarred shoulder and… well… Ace had just watched this woman cut a goddess’ head off.

So he grabbed his pipe and clambered up onto her back, which was kind of awkward. He carefully slid his legs over her shoulders, making sure not to accidentally kick Rouge or Luffy, and held his pipe well away from accidentally knocking into Liz at all. Her slicked spikes were actually surprisingly soft, Ace found, as a hand found its way onto her head for balance as she straightened to her full height again. Ace tried not to gawk about being so high up on a person or think too much about how both of his legs were in physical contact with a woman who was probably his mother.

“Let’s get this ship out to sea,” Liz said, starting towards the jungle. “Hold on tight up there, brat.”

Her long strides quickly became a brisk jog, so Ace listened, ducking under a low branch.

The sun was definitely setting now, so the jungle was either darkened or in sharp contrast. The bugs were getting noisier and carrying howls could be heard in the distance. Ace kept a sharp eye out for movement in the brush – partly because it was either that or look at Rouge and he didn’t at all want to – because it was even more dangerous out here at night than it was in the day.

“It’s really scary out here at night,” Luffy whispered to Liz from Rouge’s lap.

“Don’t worry, Luffy,” Rouge said brightly, thankfully not looking in Ace’s direction at all. “Liz is by far the scariest thing on this island.”

Ace couldn’t see the woman’s answering smirk, but he could feel it.

“Oh, yeah,” she said, moving them all through the jungle faster than Ace could have. “You better believe it.”

…Yeah, Ace... Ace was starting to.


	13. Old Guards

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Liz and Grieffe hold together, deal with some of the mess, and have a quiet moment before the storm. An interlude.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> People have been asking about this fic recently, which is... pretty cool. I really do love this fic. I haven't abandoned it and I still think about it frequently, I've just been a bit stalled on how to approach the next little bit. This is the point where characters need to come together to decide how their stories go, from Rouge and Ace, to Rouge and Liz (and Grieffe), and Rouge and Cee, and it's not coming easy. So this isn't that bit yet; this is an interlude while I _do_ work on that bit (I promise), where we get into the heads of Liz and Grieffe in the quiet aftermath of meeting a god.

 

 Grieffe was not a person who was often out of her depth. Even less was she a person who _felt_ out of her depth, but in this moment, despite years of dangerous adventure and violent crimes across the vast and chaotic seas, she felt unfamiliarly out of her depth. Out of control, yes, but never incapable.

 She stared at the young boys. The elder and conscious of them stared back – hard, suspicious, and the spitting image of both Grieffe’s captain and that moronic fool Rouge had seen fit to take up with. Yes, the boy looked very like his father, but there was quite a lot of Rouge in there too – around the curl to the hair, the slant of the eyes, and that frankly absurd amount of freckles. Not to mention the mulish and generally mistrustful glare.

 Neither of them, not Grieffe nor the boy, had been prepared for this.

 After that strange and massive aura had receded, like the tide pulling out to sea and taking all those monstrous fish with it, Eliza had soon come tearing out of the jungle. Rushing to where the House Royale was docked, the first mate had had an unconscious captain and unconscious small child in her arms, along with a slightly larger, conscious child on her shoulders. It had been a sight that had not gotten any less strange after coming into Grieffe’s eyesight as well as her extended senses; she had seen Eliza carry many people before, but… none who dared to have such a powerful grip on her hair.

 Portgas D. Ace, son of Grieffe’s captain, had turned out to be daring in more ways than one. The boy had flatly refused to board the House Royale. He had all but thrown a violent fit refusing to let his unconscious “brother” – Monkey D. Luffy, the grandson of the vice-admiral – board either.

 Grieffe, of course, had had the Troise twins ready on deck with their medical kits for Eliza’s arrival – a safe bet, when strange things were afoot and Portgas D. Rouge and Baiebleu Eliza were involved – and Portgas D. Ace had insisted that one of them see to Luffy _on the docks._ He had brandished a beaten but sturdy metal pipe as he said the order – and it had been an order, Grieffe recognize that protective and furious captain’s tone, even as the voice had squeaked – as though he were an actual threat and putting such a pathetic stick of metal in the face of Bluebeard John was not laughable at best.

 Despite the lack of substantial contest, Grieffe had found herself respecting the boy for it. Everything about him, from the rageful shaking of his fingers, to the wildness of his eyes, to the dangerous fear practically steaming off him, suggested that he had had an encounter with the strange things afoot, and his stubborn togetherness in the face of that was admirable.

 His determination not to give up his loved one, even in the face of certain failure, was hauntingly endearing.

 The sheer common sense in not getting on board a ship with practical strangers was also admirable. Dangerous, thieving strangers whom one had only met mere hours before, at that? Grieffe herself had failed that test at a much older age. Although, admittedly, the situations had been vastly different and the Rouge and Eliza of now were infinitely more dangerous than the girls that Grieffe had met when she was fifteen years old.

 Due to the boy’s intelligent and understandable reluctance – Grieffe approved, really, as it could only mean the child had thankfully not inherited his foolish father’s personality – they had all relocated to Makino’s bar. Makino herself was still in the mountains somewhere, but she had given Grieffe the keys to her residence before she had left in case Grieffe or the twins had wanted to sleep onshore for the night… or help themselves to copious amounts of East Blue alcohol.

 The keys had been more permission to make themselves at home than anything else. Doors and locks meant little to a Blackjack pirate, especially one of Grieffe’s caliber. Her hospitality was thoughtful and the loyalty years later appreciated, and, at the moment, drinking a barrel or two of something mind-numbing sounded appallingly tempting.

 Rina had already checked the vice-admiral’s grandson over and declared him to be in good health, if exhausted and weakened. It had made the situation with Grieffe’s captain’s son marginally better. The boy had ceased looking uncomfortably akin to a truly enraged Jack.

 The wide-eyed surprise when Eliza had announced that the two Devil Fruit users had taken extended dips in the ocean, as well as the nervous slant to the twins’ lips during examinations, suggested that the Troises had never seen Drowned Devil Sickness before. Thankfully, the sickness was light, speaking to an accident rather than torture, and the twins were competent. Practice was the only way to gain experience, the sickness was straightforward, and Rouge’s son had calmed at an obvious medical professional, who was doing an excellent job at pretending they knew exactly what they were speaking of, proclaiming his “brother” to be in good health.

 Currently, Rina and Rita were both sitting over Rouge, who was laid out on a makeshift pallet on a bar table several over from the children, and murmuring between them. Rouge was a much more concerning case, as it was clear more afflicted her than a dip in the sea. Drowned Devil Sickness could exhaust a user for days if they had been exposed to the ocean for too long, but Rouge appeared as though she had spent _days_ submersed, if not weeks.

 Grieffe’s captain was much paler than Grieffe remembered from earlier today. She also looked thinner and generally gaunter, with grey under her eyes that spoke of poor sleeping habits and overexertion. Even her blonde hair had less color, perhaps streaked with beginnings of grey. There were new, faint lines of age as well, the sort that Grieffe would have expected her vain captain to hide, but… this was much more than vanity. Rouge looked nearly halfway to how she had on Baterilla in South Blue.

  _Like she’s barely tottered out of the fucking grave again,_ Eliza had muttered.

 After Eliza had relocated them all to Makino’s bar and gathered some supplies for the night, in what was likely record time, the first mate had flatly proclaimed that she would fetch Makino from the mountain bandits and immediately return. Grieffe had nodded, but she knew her lover better than that.

 Eliza would likely take three times as long to fetch Makino as was truly necessary, even at a respectable pace, and the amount of time she had already been gone proved it. Eliza’s shoulders had been tense with frustration. Grieffe’s lover needed time to devastate a mountain or two before the deep, hidden rage boiling inside her would cool down to levels that would not scare the twins or the children.

 When the time and place were right, they would be having _words_ with their captain.

 While Grieffe agreed with Eliza’s decision to remove herself before her temper made itself a danger, she did not appreciate that her position as second mate had left her in command of a tenuous situation. Grieffe had essentially been left alone with a shaken, fearful, angry young child who was extremely protective of his still-unconscious adoptive sibling and on-the-edge-of-violently hostile to strangers, hovering over his brother’s pallet and ready to lash out at any moment.

 Grieffe did not count her unconscious captain and the frantically whispering midwives-turned-doctors-in-training as present. They were clearly in their own worlds of worry and mystery, and would not be of any help as Grieffe was confronted with the undesirable prospect of childcare.

 To make matters twice as undesirable: Eliza had left without performing introductions, the uncivilized brute.

 Grieffe did not know what to say to comfort or ease the child. She herself had not been a comfortable or easy child in the slightest, and she had no other experience with childcare. She broke gaze with the boy first – Whitecross Simon’s infamously eerie and persisting glare turned aside by a ten-year-old boy, how ludicrous – and adjusted her eyepatch. Then adjusted it again.

 She looked back to the boy, who had not ceased glaring mistrustfully at her. It did not appear as though he was going to speak first. Grieffe supposed that he was waiting for her to lay the grounds down between them, if there must be any contact at all, so that he did not have to relinquish the upper-hand and navigate blindly through the unknown.

 “My name is Kanone Grieffe,” she said quietly, her voice carrying the few empty tables and chairs between them with ease. “I am the gunmaster and second-mate aboard the House Royale. I have had the pleasure to know and serve your mother for approximately thirty years. Though I did not learn of your existence until very recently, it is a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Portgas D. Ace.”

 Her captain’s son seemed to bristle when she first spoke, which turned to cautiously listening, which when she finished turned back to bristling. He kept scowling silently. If he was rebuffing her attempts at diplomacy, Grieffe would prefer that he answer orally, even if it were an unwarranted and rude demand into her mental state or something similar.

 She wondered, very distantly, if this uncertainty was anything close to what her grandfather had felt when they had finally met. Kanone Buster had not been, in any meaning of the words, uncertain or shy, but… Grieffe’s distant memories did seem to recall some careful hesitation behind her grandfather’s excitable and extremely loud bluster.

 Grieffe then noticed that the boy’s gaze fell mostly on her visible weapons, as his glare swept over her in between meeting her one-eyed stare. _Ah, so that explained a part of it._ She should have noticed that and interrogated the natural discomfort of being relatively unarmed. The boy’s appearance and her captain’s physical appearance and the distant broil of Eliza’s anger were distracting.

 “Would you appreciate it if I were to disarm and give you a proper weapon as a gesture of peace?” Grieffe asked the child. The island was perfectly peaceful, now that the presence was gone, and it would likely make her captain’s son feel safer even though Grieffe would be no less deadly to him.

  _He too, must feel extremely out of his depth,_ she realized. _If not more so._

 The boy’s eyes widened slightly, then his brows furrowed in even deeper suspicion. It was so reminiscent of Rouge in one of her moods that Grieffe wondered if Eliza would appear only to ask if the boy was hoping that his face get stuck that way.

 “I am willing,” Grieffe said, and began disarming.

 Disarming was… an extensive process, with her, to say the least. Yet perhaps it could also be described as cathartic. Removing the pieces of Second Mate Kanone Grieffe was not entirely unlike removing Gunmaster Whitecross Simon.

 Grieffe removed both of her boots and set them on the table beside her, because it was easier than practically dismantling them, and then removed the knives and tools strapped above her ankles. Then she stood and shrugged out of her thick green vest, which Rouge had once described as “essentially wearable pockets”, which she dropped partly onto the bar table with a very heavy _thunk._

 Once Grieffe had ascertained that the table might not react well to her main arsenal’s weight, she set the vest carefully on the floor next to her boots instead. Her toolbelt and harness, and all the tools and beloved pistols, soon joined both of these with an equally heavy _thunk._ One that made the boys’ eyes widen even further, clearly he had not expected her equipment to be quite so weighty.

 Grieffe then removed the slightly smaller and thinner emergency belt inside her cargo trousers, and the one under her shirt, and then the ones on the outsides and insides of her thighs. The weapons in the gauntlets under her plain shirt and the shin-guards under her trousers followed, along with the armor itself, soon joined by the emergency explosives hidden in her bra. It was then that Grieffe could finally start removing everything from the many pockets of her camouflage-patterned cargo trousers.

 Some of which were weapons, most of which could very easily be turned into weapons, a fair amount of which were for weapon and machinery maintenance, like lubricant, and some things like… well… _less mechanically-intended_ lubricant and other slightly embarrassing items. One had to be prepared for both attack from enemies and spontaneous rendezvous with lovers, as Eliza could not always be trusted to remember supplies if caught in a fit of lust. Also a flask of non-alcoholic caffeine, which was tempting, as Grieffe did not see much sleep ahead of her at this rate.

 By the time Grieffe was finally done, there was a rather sizeable pile on both the table and the floor of everything dangerous she had been wearing. In her most dangerous days as Whitecross Simon, she would have had at least twice as much weaponry, strapped to her back usually, but Grieffe decided that this was a respectable amount of supplies for a mostly quiet island after twelve years of enforced retirement. There was time to prepare herself for busier days yet.

 After a brief moment’s contemplation, Grieffe reached back and undid her hair-tie. Her white hair spilled instantly free, dripping over her shoulders and down her back, and she knew she would soon find it annoying. It was unfortunate that her long hair-tie, made of materials of her own design, could be used to strangle superior marine officers if necessary.

 After another moment of contemplation, Grieffe selected a small pistol and a large knife, and held them both by the wrong end. Then she turned back towards her captain’s son and stepped forward to place them on a table equidistance between them.

 Portgas D. Ace was still staring, but not so much in anger now as in complete disbelief. His eyes were much wider than before and he looked between her and her portable weapons’ half-cache in obvious bewilderment. Grieffe supposed that she likely looked off without her bulk of weapons and armor; she certainly felt many times lighter without them.

 From nearby, one of the Troise twins quietly said, “…What the fuck.”

 Grieffe ignored this statement, having already realized this was made in relation to her armory rather than her captain. She returned to the rest of her weapons, leaving the pistol and knife for the boy to come halfway and take if he so chose. She picked up another pistol, one of similar design to the one she was offering the boy, and turned back towards him.

 Before, the boy had been looking at the offered weapons, left carefully on a table between them, as though they were a trap – more wariness that Grieffe approved of. Now that Grieffe had turned back towards him with a weapon in hand, the furious boy looked as though he might lunge for them.

 “Pay attention,” Grieffe ordered, and the boy’s glare turned to her from the weapons.

 A weapon you did not know how to use belonged to your enemy. This boy clearly had had many enemies in his lifetime and would, Grieffe knew without doubt, know many more, and Grieffe would not turn more dangers upon her captain’s son if she were able.

 Without further ado, Grieffe recited a succinct explanation of the pistol and its pieces. She had not given such a tutoring to anyone in many years, having chosen to spend most of her time in the company of no one if she could not spend it with her crew in recent years. There had been no “swabbies” to teach or untrained rebels to make dangerous. Grieffe’s “rundown”, as Eliza would have called it, was out of practice and she was not a sociable woman by nature, but she knew nothing if she did not know her weapons and the boy watched her with sharp eyes and starving determination.

 The pistol’s parts. How to load and unload it. How to fire and how to deal with recoil. How to take it apart to clean it, then how to put it back together again. Things that were, to Grieffe, now as natural and necessary as breathing. As simple as being.

 The best way to learn would be to have the boy practice these things for himself, as many times as necessary before he could take any gun and make it his own without pause. Grieffe would see to this over the course of however long they stayed, whether the boy came to trust her or not. For now, she showed the hungry child how to properly wield the weapon she offered, and did not beckon him forward to come to her or to take the weapon and demonstrate what he had learned.

 No, once finished, Grieffe gave a decisive nod to the boy and returned her pistol to the small armory that she had removed from her person. It felt strange to be wearing little more than a shirt, trousers, socks, and an eyepatch. Grieffe felt little better than naked as she stepped away from her cache, towards Makino’s bar, back turned to the boys and the rest of the dining area.

 If he were as clever as either of his parents, he could likely manage with only the explanation she had just given him. He would perhaps not thrive at first, especially if pistols were not his passion or a weapon of preference, but he would survive. Grieffe would give him no reasons to make use of the pistol until she could train him properly. The point was to make the boy feel safe; should he choose to do something wildly stupid, a single pistol and dagger would mean nothing to the gunmaster.

 Grieffe considered, as she sensed the boy rise and silently make his way towards the weapons, giving the boy some advice for the knife as well. As the boy snatched the weapons while her back was turned as hurried back to his unconscious brother’s pallet, Grieffe decided that she was too tired to bother.

 Knives were simple enough. The sharp end went in the enemy. One explanation was her limit for today. If Eliza wanted the boy trained in blades, she would have to be here to argue the point and give the training herself, and could not be upset with Grieffe for not having made warriors of children while babysitting against her will.

 Grieffe’s senses were too great for her to properly ignore the bewildered and furious boy attempting to glare a hole through her practically naked back. She made a considerable effort to persevere nevertheless. She distracted herself by reaching behind Makino’s bar and popping open the nearest bottle of something that was not utterly disgusting, and then she poured herself a glass.

 It was going to be, Grieffe suspected, a long night.

 

**{13}**

 

 It was late into the night by the time Liz returned with Makino. Running to the mountain and back would have been easy, but it had taken hours before Liz’s anger had ebbed away into something that didn’t make her feel like a danger to other people.

 Little Mack’s bar was dark as the Blackjacks’ old junior cook let them in. Liz stepped inside at Makino’s gesture and peered through the black to survey the scene, relief curling through her sore shoulders at the peace she found. She hadn’t liked leaving her captain and crew – she rarely did – but her temper hadn’t let her stay, and after so many years, it was strange as shit and absolutely fucking glorious to be able to leave something important in trusted hands again.

 The twins were curled up together on a makeshift pallet on the floor, as were the boys not too far from them. Pillows and blankets had clearly been scavenged from the House Royale and whatever Little Mack had lying around, and all the young ones had made comfortable nests for themselves. Rouge’s exhausted brat had put himself between his brother and the rest of the room, and left a clear path to the back door to make a run for it, but at least he’d stayed. Snuggling a knife and gun like lifelines.

 And speaking of the devil, Rouge was laid out on one of the bar’s tables, on a makeshift pallet herself, and she looked like _shit._ Pale and all but bones, little better than Liz had found her again. Liz almost broke the silence and scoffed, cursing herself for not seriously suspecting this sort of tricky shit from her captain. Sentimental, foolish bitch.

 As though awoken by burning ears, one of Rouge’s eyes cracked open. The barest sliver, so little that a less observant and knowing woman might have missed it, but enough for Rouge’s brown eyes to meet Liz’s own purple gaze. They stared at each other for a several long seconds. Rouge’s exhausted suspicion took in the arrival of her first mate, then the eye closed again, Rouge let out a silent, tiredly full-body sigh, and Liz’s captain clearly slipped back into a deeper level of sleep.

 It made Liz feel viciously protective and like she wanted to punch a hole in something. Like a ship. Or a small mountain. First mate and captain would be having a conversation later, when the captain wasn’t clearly running on empty and there weren’t children around to hear the shouting.

 Little Mack came up to Liz’s side, looking up questioningly. Liz shook her head, clapped her ex-crewmate on the shoulder, and gestured for the younger woman to go to bed. It might’ve been kinder to leave Makino with those mountain bandits for the night, and Liz would have had she not promised her captain’s son that she’d be back with the one person of their party he trusted.

 Liz was glad that it was Little Mack they’d found on the island with Rouge’s boys. Little Mack was a kind and gentle sort, understanding and open-minded, and a good hostess. Not really built for a pirate’s life – at least not for forever – but clearly not unwilling to be a part of someone else’s should they need a friend. A dangerous line to straddle, but one Liz was thankful for today.

 She could only imagine what might’ve happened had the boys been left near the potential care of Opie, her own second-in-command, or the like. Dear fucking hell, Liz could only hope the woman who’d gleefully created Haruki the Jackal hadn’t taken it into her mind to raise children. At the very least, Liz assumed Opie’s own mother would have stopped her.

 With an answering touch to the shoulder from Little Mack, soft hand pressing gently against the hard muscle of Liz’s arm, Makino gave a nod goodnight. She stepped away, nodded at the woman on guard, and disappeared deeper into the bar. Liz soon heard the quiet creak of stairs, then footsteps on an upper level, and then finally gave in and turned to the woman on guard.

 Grieffe was lounging at the bar itself, wearing nothing more than a plain shirt, her trousers-made-of-pockets that’d clearly been emptied of their weight, socks, and her eyepatch. She had a notebook open on the countertop and a pen in hand. Her long, silky hair was loose and, though Liz wasn’t currently being Bluebeard John, the only words that’d do her justice would be to say that she seemed to glow softly, giving off an unexpectedly vulnerable moonlight.

 She was glaring at Liz, of course. Glaring even more intensely as Liz took in the small armory in a fucking _pile_ on a table, then raised her eyebrows at the gunmaster.

 “Why, Kanone,” Liz murmured finally. “What have you been up to, snowflake?” She moved towards her lover, hips swaying teasingly. “I leave you alone for only so long and what’ve you done? You’re practically naked and you’ve given weapons to children. Wicked woman.”

 Grieffe’s scowl deepened, especially as she had to look farther and farther up to meet Liz’s eyes. They weren’t even remotely of a height when standing; Grieffe only came up to Liz’s chin, so there was quite a distance when Grieffe was sitting. Liz took this as an opportunity to sprawl into the seat next to Grieffe, putting an upper arm on the counter, her chin in her hand, and leaning in to gaze adoringly up at her thoroughly unimpressed lover.

 “Not even a kiss hello, snowflake?” Liz crooned, so quietly it was barely more than a breath.

 People who didn’t know her would have said that it would be impossible for an expression to become more wintery, but Grieffe was a woman of many talents and rather extraordinarily skills. Grieffe gave that statement the _Look_ it probably deserved and didn’t cooperate. Liz could have swooned. Oh, Grieffe was so pretty when she was pouting murderously.

 Liz liked Grieffe for a long list of reasons, despite but also because of the argumentative game of affection and rivalry they played. Grieffe was gorgeous, of course, all sweetly plump curves and graceful sharpness, but she was also simple. Grieffe looked complicated, but she wasn’t really; she was private, yes, but also straightforward, with simple needs, and her old feelings of guilt kept her far away from dangerous secrecy even years after the incident. She was prideful, but she knew her limits and she was – for someone with a world-renowned alternate identity – pretty shit at lying.

 Rouge, on the other hand? Rouge lied as well as she breathed – for fun, for safety, for greed, for pride, and for gods fucking knew what sometimes. She hid it well, behind a soft smile and a niceness that could be easily mistaken for goodness, so well that even Liz had the rare occasion where she didn’t know what the hell her captain was on about or up to. Rouge had goals that she’d stop at nothing to complete, past the point where even Liz might balk and Grieffe might pause, though they had mighty bloodlusts themselves and would follow their captain to the ends of the earth. Rouge had a fucked up sense of sacrifice and a determination of the sort that usually demanded someone die and an ability to love that was all out of whack, really. Rouge was… Rouge.

 Liz had turned away from Grieffe and was staring at her captain now. Leave it to Portgas D. Rouge to get involved in the games and politics of gods – actual, inhuman, force of _nature_ gods – and to be, presumably, forming plans even now to get them all even more fucked by divine bastards.

 “…Grieffe, what are we going to do with that woman?” Liz murmured.

 “Follow her until the end,” Grieffe murmured back, without hesitation. Then, after a pause of several seconds, added, “Perhaps we might strangle her first.”

 “Maybe this time we can make the mutiny stick?” Liz said hopefully, as she reached behind the bar and popped open a bottle of whiskey with no intention to use or need a glass. “I mean, if we’re going to be taking on the tentacles and fire sort of gods as clients now, I fucking mean it this time.”

 Grieffe stilled entirely.

 “Before you say it, I fucking wish I was kidding.”

 “…We will need to have a serious discussion with Rouge-san when she is conscious.”

 “I’ll say.”

 Grieffe looked at Liz. Seriously, this time – solemnly – without an overdone scowl or intense expressionlessness. “You must explain the situation to me. I have yet to hear one.”

 “Join the club.”

 Grieffe stare said pretty damn clearly that Grieffe held the club presidency, if not founder status, fuck you very much. It was nearly too cute for words. Liz had no intention of keeping anything from Grieffe, of course, but she really did look so beautiful when she was glaring down her nose like that. She looked so silly and Liz adored her.

 “Aww, Kanone, I’m just teasing. Just let me get a little more drunk and then my mind’s all yours to pick – and, yeah, before you say it: ‘what little mind I have’. I know you.”

 At those words, Grieffe should have scowled, but instead her expression softened into what most people would have called blandness. A hand was carefully placed on Liz’s thigh; neither Liz nor Grieffe looked down at it. Grieffe was far too busy leaning in, pressing a quick, chaste kiss against Liz’s lips, and Liz was far too busy letting her.

 Liz was tempted to follow Grieffe back as her lover pulled away, but she didn’t. Instead, Liz put her free hand over the one on her thigh, tangling their fingers together in the dark.

 “It’ll be alright, Grieffe,” Liz promised.

 “Every time that is said, it usually ends with many things on fire.”

 “Well, yeah. But it’ll still be alright.”

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I do love this story. What I need to get working on for the next bit has a long list: Rouge and Ace talking about how their relationship proceeds from here, how Luffy will be involved, Liz and Grieffe figuring out how they're going to deal with their captain lying about her health and potentially dealing with gods again, Makino and the Troise twins reacting to the pirate life (for the first time or again), whether or not the Blackjacks are going to call in any old crewmates and how to find them, and Rouge figuring out whether or not to take Cee's offer. And so on. What bits are people interested in? 
> 
> Again, I'm glad people have liked this story so far and the Rouge I've created. I do want to continue this story, especially because (and this is a bit of a spoiler, I imagine) though she's the protagonist, I am kind of trying to write Rouge as though she could be (and is always on the verge of becoming) a very dangerous villain in the world of One Piece. She's meant to be... sympathetic but scary? Switching between her perspective and other people's is me trying to explore that, I think. The Will of D. would be a scary thing to face in a person, even and especially a loving mother.

**Author's Note:**

> **Blackjack Pirates**
> 
> _Current_  
>  Portgas D. Rouge (a.k.a. Redblack Jack) - Captain and Devil Fruit User  
> Baiebleu "Liz" Eliza (a.k.a. Bluebeard John) - First Mate and Swordswoman  
> Kanone Grieffe (a.k.a. Whitecross Simon) - Gunmaster  
> Troise Rina and Rita - Doctors-in-Training (Rina is the one that can cook and often considers the possibility of hallucination. Rita is the shyer one with the penchant for romance novels) 
> 
> _Past_  
>  Hayes Della (a.k.a. Haites) - Gunmaster's Second (Currently running a supply company on Water 7)  
> Opallo "Opie" Jacquotte (a.k.a. Haruki the Jackal) - First Mate's Second (Whereabouts unknown)  
> Makino (a.k.a. Little Mack / Mack Junior) - Cook's Assistant  
> ??? (a.k.a. Big Mack / Mack Senior) - Cook  
>   
>  **Curious as to what the Blackjack Pirates look like? There's a small art collection for _'Rouge'_ in the next fic of this _'Back From the Dead, Red?'_ series!**
> 
> My tumblr can be found [here](http://lullabyknell.tumblr.com).  
> Ask box is [here](http://lullabyknell.tumblr.com/ask).  
> Fic update tag is [this one right here](http://lullabyknell.tumblr.com/tagged/lullabyknellficnews).


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